Kurdish broadcaster MED Nûçe TV, with studios in Belgium and headquarter in Italy, has been taken off air on October 3 by the French-based satellite operator Eutelsat on request by the Turkish Supreme Council for the Radio and Television - RTÜK (Radyo ve Televizyon Ust Kurulu), the authority that after the failed coup of July 15 has stepped up the offensive against the media.

The measure is based on the decree no. 668 enacted right after the declaration of the State of Emergency, causing the shutting down of three news agencies, 16 TV and 23 radio channels. Over 10 TV and radio channels were removed from the national satellite TÜRKSAT and their broadcastings were shut down on September 28.

Asked about the motivations of the Kurdish TV blackout, Eutelsat claimed to have only responded to the request by the Turkish radio and television authority to suspend a TV channel that violates Turkish laws. As with other media put in silence, MED Nûçe has been accused by the Turkish government of affiliation with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), considered as a terrorist organization.

European and Italian journalists associations reacted against the Kurdish TV's blackout with the call to “Turn on the Kurdish MED Nûçe TV immediately", launched by Anna Del Freo, Deputy Secretary-general of the National Federation of the Italian Press (FNSI) and member of the Steering Board of the European Federation of journalists (EFJ), during a press conference on October 20 at the Italian House of Representatives attended by the Kurdish TV Editor in Chief Antonio Ruggiero and the representative of UIKI (Kurdistan Information Office in Italy) Ozlem Tanrikulu.

"In Turkey - said Anna Del Freo - 92 journalists are still in prison for expressing their opinion and 2500 colleagues have lost their jobs following the closure of newspapers and broadcasters after the attempted coup of July 15. The shutdown of MED Nûçe in Turkey and also in Europe is part of the regime’s crackdown on media to ban freedom of information. We must avoid to remain silent on this. Europe must take action, the European institutions have been too silent on the Turkish and Kurdish question. "

Also Baykar Sivazliyan, President Emeritus of the Union of the Armenians of Italy, reacted against the forced stop to the Kurdish TV and expressed a great sadness for what had happened. "They turned off the free voice of the Kurdish MED Nûçe TV which, with many difficulties, carried the news from Kurdistan to the Kurdish diaspora in the West, and in many houses of Kurdish refugees in their own land. Once again the so-called Western democracies are bent to the will of the megalomaniac Sultan Erdogan.... Religious, ethnic, political minorities are drowned in their most basic freedoms."

Sivazliyan urged to protest against the unjust decision: "The silence has generated and will generate more deaths in the Middle East, people of good will and intellectually honest should not remain silent and must have a fair behavior."