"We are present in Turkey and as such we have to abide by (the demands of) the Turkish authorities and in particular RTUK," the Turkish audiovisual authority, said Rodolphe Belmer, head of French-based Eutelsat.

"RTUK asked us to suspend a Kurdish channel which it believes infringes Turkish laws and that is what we did," he told the economic affairs commission of the French senate.

The European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) condemned the decision, which widens a crackdown on media under a state of emergency declared in Turkey in the wake of the abortive July coup.

"According to EFJ sources, Eutelsat SA came under pressure from RTUK to cut the signal of Med-Nuce TV which the Turkish authorities consider a pro-PKK (Kurdistan Workers' Party) broadcaster," said an EFJ statement, voicing concern at the crackdown of recent weeks.

The PKK has waged a three-decade insurgency in southern Turkey. Ankara, the EU and US consider it to be a terrorist organisation.

Med-Nuce employees lashed out at the decision to take them off air.

"The end of Med-Nuce transmissions is above all shameful for Europe, but also a dangerous signal which can be considered as support for the repressive policies in Turkey," staff said in a statement.

Belmer said that RTUK is a member of the Council of Europe, the Strasbourg-based rights and democracy body, and also an associate member of European broadcasting authorities.

Given Turkey's status with those bodies, "we only applied the laws of our country and Europe," in meeting the demand to pull the plug on the channel, Belmer said.

On Thursday protesters plan to demonstrate the shutdown outside Eutelsat's Paris headquarters, while the lawyer representing the station's employees, Jean-Louis Malterre, told AFP he was seeking an annulment of the decision.

On Tuesday Turkish police raided the Istanbul headquarters of prominent pro-Kurdish television channel IMC TV, cutting all its transmissions in line with a previous shutdown order which has affected a slew of other channels.

Late last month Ankara also stopped broadcasts of 10 mostly Kurdish language television channels under state of emergency rules and took two radio stations off the air.

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