Turkish State Broadcaster Reports Three-Year Billion Dollar Budget

Turk­ish media is report­ing that Turkey’s state broad­cast­er, which also oper­ates in the West, has report­ed a bud­get of 7.2 bil­lion lira (about 1 bil­lion dol­lars) for the peri­od 2017–2019. Accord­ing to the Sözcü report: 

Jan­u­ary 24, 2021 TRT pub­lished activ­i­ty reports for 2017, 2018 and 2019 on its web­site simul­ta­ne­ous­ly. Accord­ing­ly, the mon­ey giv­en to TRT by deduct­ing from the its expens­es and the prod­ucts pur­chased by the cit­i­zen­ry was 7.2 bil­lion lira over three years. TRT argued that the mon­ey it received was low com­pared to oth­er coun­tries. Turkey Radio and Tele­vi­sion Cor­po­ra­tion (TRT), which was found­ed in 1964 to car­ry out radio and tele­vi­sion broad­casts on behalf of the state, did not share its annu­al reports with the pub­lic for 3 years. [Google trans­lat­ed with edits]

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The Turk­ish Radio and Tele­vi­sion Cor­po­ra­tion (TRT) oper­ates TRT World, a news chan­nel found­ed in 2015 to deliv­er Turkey’s posi­tions on world events and to rival chan­nels like major news chan­nels like CNN and BBC. TRT World’s chair­man is a for­mer class­mate of Turk­ish Pres­i­dent Erdoğan’s son, Bilal. After the 2016 Turk­ish coup, the Turk­ish gov­ern­ment purged jour­nal­ists from TRT, and TRT World employ­ees have said they were pres­sured to take the government’s posi­tion on the coup, blam­ing Penn­syl­va­nia-based cler­ic Fethul­lah Gülen. TRT has offices in Eura­sia, the Mid­dle East, as well as in Ger­many, Bel­gium, the UK, and the US, where it has had to for­mal­ly reg­is­ter itself as an agent of a for­eign government.