TRT, the Turkish national broadcaster has officially announced today via its website that Turkey will not participate at the forthcoming Eurovision Song Contest. The Turkish broadcaster had confirmed to ESCToday.com last month that it had no plans to return to the contest next year in Vienna and that an official confirmation regarding the 2015 Turkish Eurovision plans would follow in due course. 

The general director of  TRT  Mr. Ibrahim Sahin announced today that TRT and Turkey will not participate at the upcoming Eurovision Song Contest in Vienna, next year. it is yet unclear if  Turkey will return to the contest in the near future.

Turkey will be absent from the contest for a 3rd year in a row, having missed out in 2013 and 2014. Hence Turkey  joins  Slovakia, Monaco, Luxembourg, Czech Republic and Andorra, all of whom have confirmed their absence at the forthcoming Eurovision Song Contest in Vienna Austria next year.

Turkey decided to withdraw from the Eurovision Song Contest in 2013. TRT, the national Turkish broadcaster, announced in a communique on their official website on the 14th of December 2012  that Turkey would  not compete at the 2013 Eurovision Song Contest in Malmo, Sweden . The broadcaster’s reasons for withdrawing from the event in 2013 event were that the changes in the voting system of the contest: introduction of 50/50 jury and televoting deliberation, and the Big 5 rule, enabling  Spain, Italy, UK, France and Germany to automatically qualify every year for the final. The broadcaster expressed its discontent regarding these rules and felt they were not fair.

So far a total of  20 countries have confirmed their intention to join the Eurovision bandwagon next year in Vienna: France, Azerbaijan Portugal, Sweden, Denmark, Iceland, Norway, , Finland, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Cyprus, Malta, Belgium, The Netherlands, Greece, Lithuania, FYR Macedonia, Estonia and Ireland. Whilst Belarus, Montenegro, Georgia and Latvia have stated that they are most likely to enter the competition next year. The deadline for countries to submit their applications to participate at the 2015 Eurovision Song Contest has been set to 15 September.

The official list of the 2015 Eurovision participating countries is expected to be released by the EBU by early January. The 2015 Eurovision Song Contest is scheduled to be held on 19, 21, 23 May at the Wiener Stadhalle in Vienna.

Turkey debuted at the Eurovision Song Contest in 1975 with Semiha Yanki’s Seninle bir dakika.Turkey won the contest in 2003 with Sertab Erener’s Every way that I can and successfully hosted the 2004 Eurovision Song Contest on home soil in Istanbul.

Stay tuned to esctoday.com for the latest news on Turkey and the 2014 Eurovision Song Contest