by Gonca Jale Peker

“Hadi Turkce” is on air in a multi-lingual radio channel, Lähiradio 100.3 Mhz

A couple of months ago, me and a group of Turkish people, came together for the preparation of a Turkish Radio Program, ‘Hadi Turkce’. After a long preparation process, it started broadcasting on the 31st October for just once in a month.

Just imagine…Someone is studying in a foreign country within a certain period of time. Even without knowing that new country, environment, culture, lifestyles, people and language, suddenly she is taking part in a project which ensures integration of her own culture and language to that society! Yes, this is what just happened to me…

When I came to Helsinki as an Erasmus Exchange Student from Istanbul, Turkey, I found myself in this Turkish Radio Project. It is really amazing and a great experience for me. I think we are developing an important project in Helsinki. In one hand we are trying to do something national-related for Turkish people, and on the other hand we are supposing that other people might be learning and meeting our own culture.

The starting point for this project was being the voice of people who knows Turkish, whether they were Turkish or not. ‘Hadi Turkce’ has a varied content within one hour air time. For instance, it contains a part for children which has stories, riddles, funny anecdotes; interview parts according to different and popular subjects; agenda part, which contains exhibition, concert, conference news around Helsinki; a part for introducing current books, movies and albums; a talk show part; and of course Turkish Songs. As one can see, we have different contents for different tastes within one hour air time. With the beginning of the new year, our program will be on air once a week. With the increase of the number of broadcasting time, of course, the formats of the programs will be reshaping too.

I am taking part as a dj in the program. I am also preparing the agenda part for the program and I am responsible for the general flow of the broadcast. All the members are responsible for their own part, but some how ideas are taken altogether and are accomplished harmoniously and within a great team spirit.
All members of the group have different backgrounds, most of us undergraduate level students, but also master, Phd students, and some common workers like engineers or managers. Everyone is taking part on this project on a voluntary basis.

‘Hadi Turkce’ is broadcasting through the frequency of Lähiradio, which is a non commercial Finnish radio channel in Helsinki. It was formed in 1988 and is owned by four organizations; KSL, Folkhälsan, TSL and KaRa. In practice, this means that
there are four different broadcasting studios with separate programs. Lähiradio reaches audiences around 50 to 60 km circle within the capital city of Helsinki. It means potentially more than one million people. While the Folkhälsan, which is the health organization of people who speaks Finnish and Swedish, broadcasts in Swedish language, other owners are interested in selling air time of their radio’s time to individuals and organizations.

Lähiradio is open for everyone from different nationalities! Today, it broadcasts around fifteen different languages such as; Russian, Arabic, Somali, Turkish, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Kurdi, Farsi…It is possible to say that, both the channel and the Finnish society have advantages too.

In one hand, radio makes profit by selling air times and also receives economical help from the state, especially from the Ministry of Education, for these non-Finnish language programs. On the other hand, with these kinds of multi-lingual programs, the integration of other nationalities in the society is ensured.

Another feature of the channel is that it has a variety of special daily programs such as music programs, phone-in programs, many political and religious programs… Almost all programs are done by volunteers!

If you would like to make your own program in your own language, maybe you can find your opportunity in Lähiradio…

By the way, our next broadcast will be on air on the 19th December.
If you are interested in Turkish language, it might be nice to hear and practice. Follow us from http://haditurkce.blogspot.com….