Turkey’s Official Gazette readjusted the tax stamp on citizens’ mobile phones for the use of the country’s state-run public broadcaster, Radio and Television Corporation (TRT). According to a ministerial cabinet decision, the ‘TRT share’ collected from citizens’ mobile phones trade hiked from six percent to ten percent.
Turkey’s main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) previously applied to the country’s Council of State to stop the execution of a government-led tax stamp of 6 percent imposed on citizens for mobile phones trade to be used as the ‘TRT share’.
However, the Council of State decided to stop the execution of the already imposed tax stamp of 6 percent despite the objections of government-run TRT and Ministry of Customs and Monopolies, the ministerial cabinet adopted yet another resolution on August 8, leading to a growth of extra 4 percent on tax stamp for the use of TRT.
Barış Yarkadaş, a lawmaker from Turkey’s main opposition CHP party, reacted the recent resolution, saying that the AKP government unlawfully increased the rate of tax stamp on citizens’ mobile phone trade under the name of ‘TRT share’, and thus violated the Council of State’s decision to stop the execution of a prior growth on the related tax shares.
PUBLIC TAXES TO TRT FOR UNSCIENTIFIC TV PROGRAMS
While the Justice and Development Party (AKP) continues to take unlawful decisions during the ongoing state of emergency, the public opinion criticizes the government for broadcasting biased and pro-AKP programs on state-run TRT at the expense of the taxes of the citizens.
During the long-termed rule of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey’s state-run TRT and the Scientific and Technological Research Council (TÜBİTAK) have been managed by anti-science and Islamist administrators who purged the country’s critical institutions of progressive and secularist personalities and scientific technologies or projects.
Turkey’s top scientific body, Tübitak, is known with its financial support to reactionary and unscientific projects in recent years. Tübitak sponsored such projects as the therapeutic “role of religious belief and praying in the fight against cancer”. As a useful instrument of the AKP rule, Tübitak reflects what AKP understands from science considering that it sponsors reactionary and Islamic projects based on dogmas and absurdities in the name of “science”.
Meanwhile, a popular TRT TV “competition program” has confronted a great uproar in the society. Being broadcasted with the motto of encouraging the “entrepreneurial soul” of Turkish students, academics and engineers, the popular TV program has recently witnessed a farcical situation.
As some “technological” projects compete with each other as the theme of the popular program, a competitor’s project of “organic dried fruit compote producer” got to the finals as one of the most “creative” projects during the competition.
As TRT and TÜBİTAK promote unscientific and tragicomic projects under the name of “inspiring technology”, the majority of the citizens complains and questions why they are compelled to pay taxes for politically biased, unscientific and absurd programs for the state-run broadcaster TRT.
