The Turkish state broadcaster TRT starts in French – POLITICO

Turkish state media TRT launched a French-language platform on Tuesday, just a month after Kremlin-backed RT France was banned from broadcasting.

The Ankara-based organization, touted as an “alternative media power,” announced that it would provide news and opinion columns on politics, business, culture and society through its website and social media platforms, including YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

“Our French-language service will deliver rigorous, fact-based journalism aimed at improving the lives of disadvantaged, left-behind people,” said Omer Faruk Tanriverdi, TRT’s deputy director general of international broadcasts, in a press release.

He added that the network is interesting for “unveiling the truth” to the hundreds of millions of French speakers around the world.

TRT’s French platform could also become a thorn in President Emmanuel Macron’s side if he is re-elected in April RT France was during his first term. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said so openly considered the channel as a diplomatic tool to create a new “window on the world” where “international media are basically identical”.

Erdoğan and the French head of state have notoriously bad relations, and the Turkish leader didn’t flinch Calling Macron “a problem for France”.

TRT has launched four more international branches since 2016: in English with TRT World and in German with TRT Deutsch, along with TRT Arabic and TRT Russian.

The European Commission is working on a framework for foreign and domestic state-sponsored media to tackle disinformation, as the hasty ban on RT and Sputnik has highlighted the lack of proper guidelines for dealing with such media.