Last Saturday, the Turkish national final was held in the Lotto programma Sayisal Gece. Athena was already selected to go to the Eurovision Song Contes, but with which song? The Turkish audience could vote which song would represent Turkey and it was For Real. Just like last year, it caused some discussion in Turkey!

Newspaper Hurriyet called the televoting “a disaster”. Millions of Turks were watching Popstar, the Turkish variant of Idols. Millions of votes were given by phone and SMS. But TRT got only 86,000 televotes for the national Eurovision selection. This is being criticized by several famous people in Turkey. “TRT did nothing to promote the festival”, many said.

Sezen Cumhur Onal (composer): “TRT did not promote the national final. TRT had to subtitle the songs because it was in English, most people in the countryside can�t understand it. So they watched Popstar. Sertab is everywhere in Europe but not in Turkey. This is a great mistake and I don�t understand anything about that”.

Ilhan Sesen (writer): “I don�t understand. TRT did nothing to promote the national final. No ads in the newspapers, nothing! We know how happy we were last year, and now this! My eyes were looking for Sertab, it would be better if she was at the preselections”.

Kayahan (Turkish entry 1990): “I was at home and watching the national final. But were was the Turkish public? I read in the newspaper that Popstar received millions of votes. Is this our people? But did TRT anything? I was surprised that there was a preselection that night, I was zapping and then I found out! I saw Demir Demirkan (writer of the 2003 entry) but where was Sertab?”.

The article has been provided by our visitor Riza, thank you!.