TRT Avaz is a channel broadcast by the Turkish Radio and Television Corporation with focusing on Turkey and Balkans. It was launched in Turkey on 21 March 2009 and broadcasts throughout the Balkans, Turkic Central Asia, the Middle East, and the Caucasus.
Programs are televised in Azeri, Turkmen, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Russian, Tatar and Uzbek with Turkish-language subtitles, and include documentaries, talk shows, culture and music programs as well as region-specific films and soap operas. Audiences also have the opportunity to learn Turkish through tutorials.
The channel's name was announced by President Abdullah Gül as "Avaz", a word that means "voice" in many Central Asian languages.
History
The channel traces its origins to the creation of TRT-INT Avrasya on 19 February 1992 (created per decision of the General Secretariat of the National Security Council under the then-prime minister Süleyman Demirel), a sub-feed of TRT-INT catering the Turkic countries that gained their independence from the USSR in 1991, as means of international co-operation with Turkey.[1] Initially, upon launch on 27 April 1992, the channel broadcast from the Eutelsat V-F7 satellite, but moved to Türksat 1B on 23 September 1994.<r[2]