Turkey had participating at Eurovision since 1975, when they decided to withdraw in 2013. Turkey and EBU met to discuss the future of Turkey in the Eurovision Song contest. According to the story of Mahmut Ilıcalı at Cumhuriyet News, TRT decided to participate in the Eurovision Song Contest after the meeting with EBU.
Forrmer TRT general manager İbrahim Şahin kept Turkey out of the contest due to disagreements with EBU, which now appears solved. Becuase of the registration period for Eurovision Song Contest 2015 has passed, TRT will come back to Eurovision Song Contest 2016.
Current general manager of TRT Şenol Göka reported about the issues which they settled with EBU. Göka said: “There were problems with not only the voting system, but also some problems due to the ethical system.” He also reported that many countries in Europe are not pleased with the current EBU management and that there is concerns that they are not using the budget correctly. He continues: “Some countries like Italy and Romania has the same issues. Bulgaria has discussed withdrawing as well. But after the discussions with EBU, we feel satisfied they have listened to our demands and we will participate again.”
According to Göka, winning the contest is not the most important thing and the position they may get should not be cared much about. He also gave an example from football: “That is like a team that reacts due to a mistake of the referee, but that team participates in European Cups next year anyway. Our situation is like that.”
