Launched March 21, 2009 | Picture format 16:9 (576i, SDTV) | |
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 March 21, 2009 and broadcasts throughout the Balkans, Turkic Central Asia, the Middle East, and the Caucasus.
Programs are televised in Azeri, Bosnian, Turkmen, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, 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 has the potential to reach an audience of 250 million people in 27 countries and 13 autonomous regions across Eastern Europe, Western, and Central Asia, spanning Bulgaria to Afghanistan. However the channel is blocked in China due to concerns about Turkic separatism within the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.
The channel's name was announced by President Abdullah Gül as "AVAZ", a word that means "voice" in many Central Asian languages.