Kurdish media training office opens in Diyarbakır

* Photos: Botan International

Click to read the article in Kurdish / Turkish

Based in Turkey's Kurdish-majority southeastern province of Diyarbakır, Botan International has established a Kurdish media education office and sound studio in partnership with Reporters Without Borders (RSF).

Opened in Diyarbakır on August 28, the office will host training, seminars and workshops in Kurdish journalism (including podcast workshops). It will also provide e-books, a sound studio and offices free to journalists, as the RSF has announced to the international community.

As Kurdish journalism education cannot be officially offered in Turkey, Botan International aims to fill this gap in the field with its workshops.

As part of the workshops organized by Botan International so far, journalists from from a range of media outlets such as the BBC, New York Times, Deutsche Welle (DW), the Voice of America (VOA), Mezopotamya Agency (MA), The Guardian, Reuters, Gazete Duvar and bianet shared their techniques and experiences in their mother language Kurdish.

Murat Bayram, the founder and CEO of Botan International, says:

This work will go down in the history of Kurdish journalism. An organization has been established to offer Kurdish journalism training in the North for the first time. This is a belated step and also a right violated by the state of Turkey.

Botan International has also published the notes of trainers as an ebook, the access to which is free. (FD/SD)