What Botan International have done in 6 months in partnership with RSF

Botan International is an educational institution based in Şirnak and Diyarbakir that protects Kurdish journalism and Kurdish press freedom in partnership with Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and supported by European Endowment for Democracy (EED).

Botan International is the first and only Kurdish organization that gives Kurdish media training in the history of Turkey.

Botan International is also the only non-government media education organization located in East and Southeast of Turkey.

Botan International organized Kurdish Podcast Workshop, Kurdish Diction Workshop, Kurdish Video-Program Presenting Workshop and Mobile Journalism Workshop. During the project period, only these four Kurdish media workshops were held in Turkey and all of these workshops were held in partnership with Botan International-RSF.(Click the names of workshops to watch videos)

186 people attended our workshops in two years. 21 people attended our workshops during this period.

A group of 10 people attended the Podcast and Diction workshops in the “audio news” category. 3 of the workshop participants were male and 7 were female.

11 people attended the Presenting and MOJO workshops in the “video journalism” category. 4 of the participants were male and 7 were female. 

Mehdî Mutlu / Kurdish Video Program Presenting Workshop

Murat Bayram / Kurdish Mobile Journalism Workshop

• We took an active role in maintaining journalism in sensitive times. (For example, when the police raided four media offices in Diyarbakır and detained 20 journalists. We announced again that our office is open to journalists whose offices were closed. We followed their cases in the courthouse. We made a program about the “journalism story” of each journalist. Click to read the news  : 

https://www.rudaw.net/english/middleeast/turkey/080620221 )

• Diplomatic delegations visit Botan International to learn about the situation of journalism in Kurdish in Turkey.

(During the project period, Germany’s Turkish Embassy Media Undersecretary and a delegation with him visited our office – In the same year, Germany’s Ambassador to Turkey also visited our office. The UK Deputy Ambassador to Turkey and Undersecretary of Political Affairs have visited our office on 8 November.

We will attended the Turkish-German Journalists Seminar of the German Embassy on November 16.

• We arranged one of our rooms as an interview room.
• We attended 21 meetings, panels and symposiums to advocate for Kurdish media and freedom of expression in Kurdish media in Turkey. Botan International representative, Murat Bayram, was a speaker at 9 seminars in 6 months.
• We provide a free working environment (newsroom, internet, photocopy machine, tea, coffee ) and a free studio for journalists who have no office  or whose offices are closed due to the economic crisis caused by the pandemic or due to direct pressure from the government.
• We create a network between freelance journalists and media institutions (serbestgazeteci.com )
• We prepared video  programmes in order to make journalists who are defending journalism more visible (Journalist Case Video Program) 
• More than 450 video-programs are produced in our studio in one year. The owners of these programs had very different perspectives on each other politically.