Director of Turkish public broadcasting international news channel TRT World Bora Bayraktar addressed the International Conference "Russia - Islamic World: Practical Steps in Media Cooperation," which is taking place Thursday in Moscow.
"We all know that Russia has a large Muslim population. Russian President Vladimir Putin recently said that the Islamic world is a traditional partner of Russia. It is necessary to develop our cooperation in the interests of both sides. For a long time, the world was dominated by international media, controlled by Western countries. But now many states, including Muslim ones, are starting to work in their own way in this sphere, since a one-sided approach harms people's interests. From this point of view, it is important that both in Russia and in Muslim countries there is an opportunity to independently deal with outreach work and fight against biased attitudes. We develop our contacts in various fields, the same should be done in the media sphere. But this should be a "two-way street," stressed the speaker.
"Russia should be able to convey its position, but the Muslim world should also be able to express its own without intermediaries. We need each other. We need to better understand Muslims in Russia, and they need to better understand us," Bayraktar noted.
The speaker also recalled his visit to Kazan last year, where he said he realized that Russian Muslims have an opportunity to express their position, they have their own organizations, their own social networks. "They should also be able to get in touch with our similar organizations, and we should express our point of view without restrictions during the dialogue," stressed the director of TRT World.
GSV "Russia - Islamic World"