By Handan Kazanci
ISTANBUL
If you search for an online video of the first broadcast on Turkish television, you may be in for a surprise.
The clip purporting to be the 1968 landmark moment in mass communications in Turkey is – according to Turkey’s first TV presenter – actually an elaborately-staged remake, painstakingly reconstructed 15 years after the real event.
“The first broadcast was such an important thing and it has gone,” says Turkey’s first lady of television, the urbane 66-year-old Nuran Devres, who now lives in upmarket Istanbul.
Claiming that staff at TRT – the Turkish Radio and Television Corporation – accidentally copied over the recording of channel’s first transmission, Devres says the station later scrambled to recreate the historic moment.
Technicians even went so far as to re-shoot the scene in black and white, as color TV had already taken hold.
“I was a young girl at the time of the first filming, but when we shot the second one I was already married, my hair was different… everything was different,” Devres recalls.
Despite the colorful tale, senior managment today at the station - when asked by AA - fail to recall the incident, meaning it has become something of an urban legend in Turkish broadcasting.
Devres – now a well-known screenwriter for popular TV shows in Turkey – recalls the day of the ‘real’ first broadcast: “It took me weeks to memorize the two sentences that I said during the broadcast.”
For Devres those two sentences are branded onto her memory: “'This is Ankara television on test broadcasting via the third band, fifth channel. We begin tonight’s test broadcast.'”
“None of us could sleep the night before the first shooting; we were all too nervous – ‘what if I forget what I was going to say?’ It was live and we wouldn’t be able to fix a mistake,” she says.
Despite all their efforts they experienced some broadcasting interruptions due to technical problems “but we finished it and at the end people were clapping, hugging each other and congratulating me,” Devres remembers.
The first broadcast lasted two hours and mainly consisted of speeches by officials and documentaries. Apart from the opening and windup, Devres introduced each programme.
Devres’ family had to watch their daughter’s first appearance on TV in front of a store in Ankara as most people didn’t have a television set at the time.
“It was like being a pop star; people were trying to meet with me, including high-ranking army officials,” she says, referring to army influence in Turkey which lead a military intervention only three years after her broadcast.
Devres’ desire to be a TV presenter began when she saw a television for the first time in her life when she was around 17-years-old and visiting Belgium.
Three years later she was taking an exam at TRT headquarters in Ankara to be a TV presenter. Fighting off competition from more than 1,000 people, she succeeded in becoming one of two presenters of Turkey’s national TV.
Devres also worked as a producer and presenter for Voice of America for around two years in the U.S. from 1971.
'How Turkey sees the world'
Since that night in 1968 generations of Turks have witnessed major developments in their country by watching and listening to TRT.
The TRT Ankara studio was the first place to be seized when Turkish army generals wanted to announce that they had taken power after a military coup in 1980. When the U.S. astronaut Neil Armstrong became the first person to step onto the Moon, Turks saw it on TRT.
From its first broadcast TRT changed Turkish people’s lives in many ways.
The corporation played an effective role in increasing awareness of urbanization within Turkey, according to TRT general-director Senol Goka who has been working for the company since 1986.
“As a public broadcaster TRT programmes are made with a sense of responsibility and have contributed significantly to the development of a democratic consciousness (in Turkey),” Goka says.
Turkey’s state-owned TV channel is funded mainly from taxes levied on electricity bills and from another levy on TV and radio equipment.
Another important influence of TRT was its effect on the Turkish language, says Yuksel Aytug, a TV critic for daily newspaper Sabah.
“Especially at the time of the TRT’s first broadcasting, education opportunities were limited and people learned standard Turkish from TV.
“In fact, thanks to the TV broadcasts, dialect differences were reduced and almost everyone began speaking Istanbul Turkish,” Aytug adds.
According to Aytug, TRT’s qualified personnel served in prominent positions at newly established private TV channels during the 1990s.
Today TRT has 15 TV channels including in Arabic, Kurdish and TRT Avaz, which mainly broadcasts to Turkic republics in former Soviet territory.
TRT management has been working to establish an English-language channel, TRT World, for the last 14 months.
“We are trying to create a global brand for Turkey,” says deputy director general of TRT Ibrahim Eren adding that the new channel "will tell how the world is perceived from the intersection point of East and West."
Eren says that Europe’s biggest studio was constructed in Istanbul for the new channel.
Pointing out that the new channel was established from a need for a neutral point of view that understands West and East, Eren says their audiences are “global citizens with a global conscience.”
TRT World will broadcast from its studios in Istanbul, Washington, London and Malaysia with reporters in more than 70 countries.
In this digital age it is highly unlikely that a hapless technician will erase the tape of TRT’s first broadcast in English – but producers may keep Devres’ phone number close by, just in case.
