It was built under the insurance terms of the turnkey system contract to replace the first Turkish satellite Türksat 1A, which was lost following a launch failure on January 24, 1994.
The contract was modified so that the coverage area of Türksat 1C was enlarged by two big zones.
Finally, when these processes completed Türksat 1B was positioned at 31.3°E following similar orbital manoeuvres.
Turksat 1C was designed for covering Turkey and Europe on west spot by vertical emission and Turkey and Central Asia on east spot by horizontal emission so as to serve simultaneously between Europe, Turkey and Central Asia, and to provide direct connection between Europe and Central Asia.
[1] The communications payload consists of 16 Ku band transponders with eight backup, nine with 36Mhz, two with 54Mhz and five 72Mhz bandwidth.