Mourning Turkey’s Last Progressive Radio Station

But in October, as Acik Radyo prepared to celebrate its 30th anniversary, its programmers received distressing news. The Turkish government’s media oversight body, the Radio and Television Supreme Council (RTUK), was shuttering their station. Acik Radyo could no longer use its FM frequency; even its name was confiscated.

Station managers trace Acik Radyo’s troubles to an episode of the morning show “Acik Gazete” (“Open Newspaper”) in April, when a guest made reference to commemorating the Armenian genocide in Turkey: “That is no longer possible,” the guest said. The Turkish government denies that the Armenian genocide took place, but in the late 2000s and early 2010s, it allowed large groups of people to attend commemorations and the media to publish about it. As Turkey transitioned to a direct election presidential system and Recep Tayyip Erdogan consolidated power, public discussion and commemoration of the issue has been criminalized.

A month after the incident, RTUK suspended broadcasts of the radio’s morning show for five days, imposed a hefty fine, and ruled that station founder Omer Madra and his fellow broadcaster Ozdes Ozbay could no longer host “Acik Gazete.” The station paid the fine, but in July, RTUK announced it would revoke Acik Radyo’s license altogether because the comments about genocide incited “society to hatred and hostility.”

Acik Radyo broadcast one last time on Oct. 16. Madra’s final words on air were: “That’s it. We’re ending it. We thank all the listeners and all the people who have supported us. Acik Radyo will remain open to all the universe’s sounds, colors, and vibrations.” 

For many listeners, Acik Radyo was a cultural oasis in Turkey’s otherwise stifling media landscape. Turkish airwaves are dominated by state-approved programming that includes Erdogan’s daily speeches, broadcasted from start to finish.

Acik Radyo refrained from airing these speeches. Challenging pervasive notions about country and nation was its mission from the start. When it launched nearly 30 years ago, the first song Madra and his son played on air was the Sex Pistols’ punk version of “My Way.” On Acik Site, one of Turkey’s first websites, the radio’s founders published their manifesto: “Radio, TV, newspapers, and the like are all so terribly tedious and boring,” it opened. They serve “nothing but a magnanimous mediocracy; … full of sound and fury, signifying nothing but a deafening cacophony.” Acik Radyo offered instead to establish a “theater of the mind” that would “bring intelligent, sensitive, responsible, and polite people together.”

In doing so, it also put forth a pluralistic, progressive alternative to the authoritarianism that has come to characterize Turkey under Erdogan. As Turkish ethnic nationalism increased over the past decade, the station hosted contributors of various ethnicities from all over the country and from abroad. Acik Radyo welcomed scholars and experts in its programming, even as a spirit of anti-intellectualism became ascendent in Turkey. Daron Acemoglu, a Turkish American economist and Nobel laureate, was a recent guest, as was Orhan Pamuk, the first Turkish Nobel laureate. Editors from Agos, the Armenian Turkish newspaper founded by the slain journalist Hrant Dink, hosted the weekly program “Radyo Agos.”

Acik Radyo covered a wide range of vital issues that state-controlled media largely ignored, from the climate crisis to the dispossession of Turkey’s minorities, past and present. It also organized annual conferences on media independence, freedom of the press, climate change, and globalization.

Acik Radyo pushed for democratization and thus became an important symbol among progressives. The filmmakers Çigdem Mater and Mine Ozerden, who are serving 18-year sentences on charges of aiding an attempt to topple the government during 2013’s Gezi Park protests, were regular Acik Radyo listeners and tuned in to hear Madra’s morning show each day, according to the station’s program coordinator, Didem Gencturk.

Often the station went beyond politics and simply invited listeners to expand their cultural horizons. I heard the music of Joni Mitchell, John Cage, and Leonard Cohen for the first time on Acik Radyo, and the station opened my eyes to what progressive, experimental works of culture can achieve.

The programming helped foster a sense that change was possible in Turkey—and that’s what made the station dangerous to Erdogan’s regime. By shutting down Acik Radyo, the Turkish government has made clear that it fears civil society undertakings that use old-school media to communicate their message.

New media such as Instagram, TikTok, and X can condemn users to information bubbles. But newspapers, radio, and books allow people to encounter the heterogeneity of their culture. By broadcasting on radio waves, Acik Radyo was able to get beyond the limiting structures of algorithms, exposing its listeners to challenging content outside their comfort zones. Acik Gazete drew tens of thousands of listeners, many on their way to work each morning and on the return trip home in Istanbul’s notorious traffic.

The decline of old-school media is a win for autocracies everywhere because it forces readers and listeners back to the world of influencers and echo chambers on social media, where political content increasingly resembles the kind of television programming that Acik Radyo sought to counter in the first place.

The move to shut down Acik Radyo parallels attacks against progressives and dissidents within the country. The Turkish government picks its targets carefully: print newspapers with large followings among the urban elites, NGOs that passionately defend progressive causes, and marginalized groups whose members are well-connected nationally and around the world—and are prepared to voice their grievances about Turkey’s rising illiberalism.

In 2016, the government bankrupted Radikal, a highbrow newspaper popular with urban elites and academics. Osman Kavala, the founder of Anadolu Kultur, an NGO that funds the work of contemporary artists and social scientists, has been behind bars since 2017. Last month, the streaming platform Mubi, whose founder Efe Cakarel is Turkish, pulled its upcoming festival in Istanbul “for security reasons” after local authorities banned the screening of Luca Guadagnino’s Queer.

These acts, intended to chip away at a unified civil society, send a chilling message to Turkey’s intellectuals and progressives: Part ways with intellectual outlets where you feel safe and connected with your peers, or face the consequences.

In the days following its final broadcast, Madra and Ozbay hosted a shorter version of their program on the YouTube channel of Mirgun Cabas, a former CNN Turk programmer who was sacked in 2016. Recently, the leftist newspaper Birgun also notified the team it could use the paper’s back page to produce a written edition of “Acik Gazete.” The Acik Radyo team ultimately didn’t take Birgun up on the offer, but considered it a powerful display of solidarity.

Madra had hoped to avoid relaunching Acik Radyo as an internet radio station, which would make access more complicated for many listeners, including dissidents in prison, such as Mater and Ozerden, or those who lack internet access. But it soon became clear the internet was only option: The government regulator wasn’t going to give back their frequency and name, and applying for a new frequency license would take too long. The team settled on the name Apacik Radyo, or Obviously Open Radio, and launched as an internet stream.

Madra described the saga of their closing as “the definition of Kafkaesque,” and joked that it was fitting for it to occur in the centenary of the Czech novelist’s death. About his station’s future, though, he sounded a note of optimism. “We’re determined. We’ll keep on doing our job.”