After today's announcement that Turkey has arrested the Kurdish guerrilla leader Abdullah Ocalan, Kurds across Europe and the Middle East are watching the Kurdish satellite TV station Med TV for news of the latest developments .

Peter Feuilherade of BBC Monitoring has this roundup of the complex Kurdish broadcasting scene: Med TV is a UK-based Kurdish TV channel with studios in London and Denderleeuw (Belgium).

The station takes its name from the ancient name for the Kurdish people, the Medes.

It is aimed at Kurds living in Europe and the Kurdish areas of Turkey, Iraq, Syria and Iran.

According to Med TV, its programmes, which go out in Kurdish dialects and Turkish, are watched by up to 10 million Kurds, half the estimated total Kurdish population.

There is also a weekly news bulletin in English (Wednesdays 1300-1315), and some programming in Arabic.

A senior Med TV official, Diler Akrei, says some Kurds call his station "a nation in the sky" .

Med TV was granted a 10-year licence in 1994 by the UK Independent Television Commission (ITC) and began test transmissions in March 1995.

Since the station began regular broadcasting on a Eutelsat satellite in May 1995, the Turkish government has brought pressure to bear on any country which leases airtime to Med TV.

Turkey claims that the station is connected with the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which Ankara describes as a separatist and terrorist organization.

PKK leader Ocalan has himself said that Med TV could never have existed without the PKK, but he added that "it can represent any ideology, any opinion and any cultural minority" .

Pressure from Turkey has forced Med TV repeatedly to change its satellite transmission arrangements.

It currently broadcasts on the Hot Bird 4 satellite at 13 degrees east.

In Britain, the ITC has issued warnings to Med TV on several occasions for breaches of rules on impartiality.

In March 1998 it was warned again and fined for a broadcast that the ITC said "constituted encouragement and incitement to crime".

And in November 1998 the ITC gave Med TV notice that its licence would be revoked if it failed to comply over the following six months.

Med TV has also suffered from what appears to jamming of its satellite feed on a number of occasions and has accused Turkey of deliberate interference to its signals.

New station to rival Med TV At the beginning of this year the Turkish newspaper `Milliyet' reported that a new station, Kurdistan Television (KTV), was being launched in northern Iraq as an alternative to Med TV, which has a wide audience not just in eastern and southeastern Turkey but also in northern Iraq.

The new station, which will broadcast via satellite, is being established at the initiative of Mas'ud Barzani, leader of Iraq's Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP).

"The reason for the KDP's initiative to set up a satellite television station is reportedly its desire to prevent the PKK from establishing a constituency in northern Iraq by means of Med TV," the `Milliyet' newspaper commented.

In December 1998 KTV was observed with test transmissions to Europe and the Middle East via Eutelsat and Intelsat satellites.

Apart from Med TV, Kurds in Turkey can also listen to the Voice of Independent Kurdistan, a radio station that has broadcast on shortwave in support of the PKK since 1993.

Yet another contributor to the propaganda effort directed at Turkey's Kurds is a radio station called Voice of Dicle, which broadcasts in Turkish, Kurdish and Arabic in support of the Turkish government and is hostile to the PKK.

It was first monitored in 1993.

The radio broadcasts on mediumwave and is also observed on an audio subcarrier on the Turksat 1C satellite.

Dicle is the Turkish name for the Tigris river.

Iran and Iraq There are more than 10 local television and radio stations operated by various organizations and groups in northern Iraq, which has been under the control of the Kurds since 1991.

The KDP and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan have two television stations.

There are also stations operated by groups as diverse as the Kurdistan Conservative Party, the Islamic Movement of Iraqi Kurdistan, the Kurdistan Communist Party and the Kurdistan Socialist Democratic Party.

There are also at least three radio stations targeted at Iran's Kurdish regions broadcasting programmes in Kurdish hostile to the Iranian government.

Links: Med TV: www.ib.be/med/ KDP radio: www.kdp.pp.se/ktv PUK radio: www.puk.org Source: Monitoring research 16 Feb 99