Highlights from the speech of Director of Communications Fahrettin Altun:
I greet you with my most heartfelt feelings, respect and affection.
I am very pleased to be with you at the “TRT Spanish Speaking Countries 1st Broadcasting Summit”. You are all welcome to our summit, you are honored. Our Publishing Summit started yesterday with the International Journalism Workshop.
Today, it will continue with sessions attended by valuable panelists who are experts in their fields.
Dear Guests, TRT Spanish is one of the practical extensions and concrete outputs of our Turkey Communication Model, which we have worked hard to build.
The Turkish Communication Model, which we institutionalized with the “communication mobilization” initiated by our President, was shaped in line with the goals of contributing to the global struggle for justice and truth, on the one hand, and announcing Turkey’s justified theses to the whole world, on the other hand.
Within the framework of this model, our Directorate of Communications, our Turkish Radio and Television Corporation, our Anadolu Agency and our Press Advertisement Agency continue their work and wage a great struggle for truth nationally and internationally.
Dear Participants… While describing his period, Alfred Musset, a Western writer who wrote works in the 19th century, says: “All the diseases of the century arise from two reasons. “Whatever was before has disappeared, and nothing in the future has yet emerged.” These words of Musset essentially reveal the stuckness and helplessness that modern people have experienced since that day of modernity.
Having to live in a rapidly changing world where tradition is shaken, modernity cannot be built, and where modernity cannot be built… Despite all modernist narratives, even in the Western world today, societies cannot produce institutional solutions to the acceleration of history and space. In our age where history and space accelerate so much, there are two challenges before societies. First, to be able to build stable socio-political systems. Second, to establish a network of inter-communal relations based on trust.
“Establishing healthy communication bridges between societies is a necessity”
In order to respond to both challenges, it is imperative to establish healthy communication bridges between societies.
Of course, when we say this, we are not ignoring the global exploitation order that created itself together with the Western world system after the 19th century.
However, if we are to make a start in the global struggle for rights and justice, we can make this start by increasing the inter-communal relations and interactions that will be built through mutual and well-functioning communication bridges.
Today, although the main reason that causes global injustice is not the absence of a healthy inter-communal communication system, the scarcity and weakness of mutual and well-functioning communication bridges in inter-communal relations deepens global injustice.
“Prejudice is the food of exploitation”
Look at the atrocities we face globally today! Could these oppressions continue without the deafening noise of the oppressors? If the oppressed could speak more, if humanity listened to the oppressed in order to understand them, would this system of oppression continue?
We have to establish a world system in which societies can establish real and healthy communication. For this, first of all, we need to know each other better as societies. Prejudice is the food of exploitation.
A system of exploitation without prejudice cannot be established! Destroying systems of exploitation is possible by eliminating prejudices. Eliminating prejudices is possible through communication. Not a one-sided, but a multi-sided communication!
There can be no justice in a world where the West speaks and the non-Western world remains silent, where the West produces discourses and the non-Western world consumes these discourses. The Western colonial order deepens and takes root.
“Our struggle is the struggle to end this colonial order and establish global justice.”
Dear Participants, we evaluate international broadcasting and the increasing broadcasts made by TRT in different languages in this context.
In the last two years, TRT launched TRT French, TRT Balkan, which broadcasts in 3 different Balkan languages, and TRT Afrika, which broadcasts in 4 different languages. These newly opened channels gained millions of followers in a very short time.
The number of followers of TRT International Digital News Channels exceeded 44 million.
I am sure that the TRT Spanish Digital News Platform, which we launched today, will receive the same attention.
Dear Guests, Esteemed Panelists Honoring Our Country from Abroad
We consider a world in which people remain indifferent to each other’s problems as the greatest disaster that will ever happen to humanity. Wael B. Hallaq “Encounters are what establish us; It is the encounters that make us who we are. They are what make the world what it is. Nothing is possible without encounter.” He draws attention to this exact issue. We have to make these encounters more understandable and visible without excluding or marginalizing them. Broadcasting in a language spoken by millions of people, such as Spanish, means opening different thoughts and new doors to people. We must also point out that digital public broadcasting, which diversifies the international media order, is an element that will prevent the uncontrolled increase of systematic disinformation.
“With intellectual and in-depth publications, international sources of disinformation can be destroyed and awareness can be raised on this issue.”
For this very reason, I believe that TRT Spanish will represent a strong alternative to the Western-centered international broadcasting approach.
We cannot accept that the international broadcasting field is dominated by a few large Western media companies.Uniform publishing is unacceptable in the field of international publishing.
With TRT Spanish, we will contribute to diversity and multicultural broadcasting in the field of international broadcasting. He will have the opportunity to explain Turkey’s foreign policy in favor of peace and justice to more people. We will make our country’s economic, cultural and human potential more visible and we will have the opportunity to further strengthen the bridges of friendship we have established with many Latin American countries. Of course, some of our Western friends and colleagues are disturbed by these initiatives, our attempts to destroy the global media monopoly and establish justice in the field of international broadcasting.
As a matter of fact, yesterday we were faced with various publications in some Western media organizations that were skeptical about the establishment of TRT Spanish and stated that Turkey had undertaken such initiatives because it found the Western media “discriminatory, marginalizing and standardizing”. We understand their discomfort, but their discomfort cannot turn us back from this rightful struggle.
Today, the global society needs diversification of information sources, development of friendly relations between countries, and fair and equitable alternative perspectives.
And like never before! Because the current situation of the world is exactly as Uruguayan writer and journalist Eduardo Galeano said.
Galeano said: “The 20th century, born with a cry for peace and justice, died drowned in blood and left behind a world far more unjust than the one it found. “The 21st century, which was born with the cry of peace and justice, is following in the footsteps of the previous century.” As Türkiye, we do not accept that the world is condemned to this pessimism described by Galeano.
“Our place is on the side of the truth!”
Our President’s call for global justice, expressed succinctly by saying “The World is Bigger than Five” and “A More Just World is Possible”, is the clearest indicator of this. In this regard, we oppose an order in which the oppressor oppresses the oppressed, the last example of which we saw in the genocide in Gaza.
As expected, our stand against the injustice of the global order and our shouting of the truth in the face of injustice disturbs groups with evil aims like Israel. These evil groups are trying to distort the truth and increase their cruelty through terrorism and systematic lies and disinformation campaigns. But no matter what they do, our place is clear when it comes to the Palestinian cause. Our place is on the side of truth!
Turkey has always been and will continue to be the biggest supporter of a sovereign, independent and territorially integrated Palestinian state, based on the 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital. We keep watch for the truth.
We fight for truth.
“TRT will continue our vigil for the truth in Spanish in the strongest possible way on different continents, in different countries and societies.”
As of today, our TRT Spanish Digital News Platform will continue our vigil for the truth in the strongest possible way on different continents, in different countries and societies.
As I end my speech with these feelings and thoughts, I once again wish that TRT Spanish and TRT-Spanish Speaking Countries 1st Broadcasting Summit will be beneficial for all of us.
I congratulate the TRT family for their work and thank each and every one of them.
Finally, I would like to express my gratitude to the press members and experts who came to our country from the other side of the world, honored our summit and contributed to the panels.
