Khalid Khayati
Globe Political Desk

The contemporary process of globalisation, which has been accelerating strongly after the fall of the Berlin wall, and the end of the bipolar international political system has not diminished the importance of ethnicity and the struggle of the ethno-national populations for achieving their national rights and political sovereignty. As part of the social, cultural and political arrangements in a globalized world, the Kurdish political movement in Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Syria and even in the Diaspora, nevertheless, has become conscious about the significance of the print media, the satellite radios and televisions and even the Internet.

In 1995 the first satellite television station, MED-TV was created in exile. MED-TV has been perceived not only by the Kurds but also by many international political observers as a powerful instrument of nation-making which was added to the arsenal of the Kurdish national movement. Now, ten years after the establishment of this first satellite television, the Kurdish people have access to a significantly greater number of satellite TV and radio stations, not the least, three newly established channels, Rojhelat-TV, Komala-TV and Tishk-TV. These new satellite TV stations, which follow the footsteps of other Kurdish TV channels such as Roj TV, Kurdistan TV, Kurdsat and Zagros TV will be, as it is announced, the first of their kind to broadcast principally for Iranian Kurdistan.

Kurdish nation-making on air and online
During these 10 years of Kurdish TV-broadcasting an abundance of diversified social, political and cultural programmes has been produced. These programmes which have been displayed for example through political panels, music and poetry shows, news broadcasting, etc. have been perceived by those scholars who carry out modern studies on Kurds as significant “On air” platforms of identity-making and nation-building.

It is important to underline the fact that the televisions and radios are not the only communication instruments in the era of the reconstruction of the Kurdish nation. The most impressive evolution has been the use of the Internet.

The increasing number of the Kurdish websites and chat rooms can be apprehended as various cyberspaces or “online” platforms that along with the “on air” television and radio arrangements provide the Kurds with very effective tools of communication which, with the intention of making its own Kurdish “imagined community” or national identity, challenge the existing geographic, political and cultural constraints in Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Syria and in the Diaspora.

This is a way to win democracy and to realise the emancipation from the status quo imposed by the repressive political entities. The future can of course convey further contributions in the domain of communication technologies for the Kurdish nation on condition that Kurds reduce effectively, even “On air” and “Online” the influence of the classical party-political syndromes and other forms of socio-political fragmentation, on the subject of not least the strongly marginalised and oppressed many millions Iranian Kurds who have always been without a TV channel of their own.

Hegemonic democratic culture through satellite TV
We should call in our mind that Kurdish people in Iran are denied their national identity and other basic socio-political rights. They are in their daily life subjected to a rude violence, exerting throughout the modern history of the Iranian nation. Conscious about the globalization in its related political, social and cultural flows, the Kurdish oppositional organisations in Iran have now opted for the transfer of an important part of their resistance and struggle to the domain of satellite broadcasting with the intention of reversing the unbalanced and asymmetric power relation in Iran. In this respect, it is essential to take into account the fact that a Kurdish Satellite TV station, which is reduced to a party-political platform, will undoubtedly be less effective in its efforts to bring the solution to the Kurdish question.

The solution of the Kurdish issue in Iran is about a process of making an identity, which is denied; it is about promoting the universal democratic values, understanding of human rights and the civil society. Reversing the power relation in Iran is highly conditioned by realising a sense of togetherness, a cohesive national political project and the establishment of many transparent platforms of dialogue among Kurds. For achieving this, the profile and the scope of the Kurdish TV channels should be imagined beyond the party-political boundaries. We need a hegemonic democratic culture in Eastern Kurdistan.

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