The general directorate of state broadcaster Turkish Radio and Television Corporation (TRT) announced that it will not broadcast the finale of the 58th edition of the Eurovision Song Contest, which is scheduled to take place on Saturday in Malmö, Sweden, Turkish news agencies have reported.
TRT’s General Directorate said on Tuesday in a written statement that it will not broadcast the contest’s final round so as not to concede in principle following its decision last December to withdraw Turkey from the Eurovision competition in protest, but added that it will reconsider its participation for next year.
In December of 2012, TRT, which selects the act that will represent Turkey at the Eurovision contest each year, stated that Turkey would not take part in this year’s event. TRT explained in a written statement that the withdrawal from the 2013 event was in protest of Eurovision’s revised voting procedure, saying that the reduction in the weighting of public votes to 50 percent of the total score made the voting unfair. TRT also criticized Eurovision’s “automatic qualifiers” rule that guarantees the UK, France, Spain, Italy and Germany — the five biggest members of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), which organizes the Eurovision contest — plus the host country a place in the finals without competing in the two qualifying rounds.
Source Zaman.
