GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The Turkish national broadcaster TRT will hold talks with the EBU regarding the new Eurovision rules in a last ditch attempt to see Turkey at next year’s contest. Talks will be held in Istanbul between TRT manager, Ibrahim Sahin, and EBU’s Broadcasting Committee in two weeks time.
Turkey, which withdrew from this year’s contest, is unhappy with the rule changes which have taken place over the past few years citing a lack of transparency and jury bias. This week, the EBU addressed these concerns with new rules regarding jury votes. However, it is believed this won’t be enough to tempt TRT to return to the contest.
TRT has issued the following statement, “With the new changes of the rules which will give more transparency about the results, where the juries also will have to explain how they voted the day after the contest, it is of course important to have a chance to object to the results, but our criterias haven’t been met yet. Think about a country that 10 millions of fans voted for in the contest and then only three people can change the result with 50% of the final results. Jury result should therefore be limited and the public opinion matter most. And there is also an absurdity about the big five (Germany, United Kingdom, Italy, Spain and France) who we think should have to qualify as well via the the semi-finals. After the meeting that will be held in two weeks in İstanbul, we will give our final decision about maybe joining the Eurovision Song Contest 2014 in Copenhagen”.
