Radio Skala Iskele

In 1966, Fiat produced one of its most influential cars: the Fiat 124. Fiat had high expectations for the vehicle, so it launched an ambitious publicity campaign to introduce it. In the famous advertisement, a Fiat 124 was dropped by parachute from a plane along with five crew members. The car became so influential that it almost immediately attracted the attention of several states seeking to dev...

Episode 2, Part 3 - Music:  “...and by sheer luck, we happened to be in its path.” In a 2019 television appearance, Ertan Saban shared an anecdote about the renaming of his homeland to North Macedonia, reflecting on history through the words of his father. During the negotiations between Greece and Macedonia, both states reached an agreement regarding their respective claims over the heritage of h...

In 1962, Mikis Theodorakis found himself in Cuba as part of a mission of the then EDA (United Democratic Left), visiting the island three years after the Cuban Revolution. During their trip, a feast was organized on the top floor of the “Havana Libre Hotel”, formerly known as the Hilton. There, Theodorakis found himself surrounded by Cuban revolutionaries: Fidel Castro, ministers of the revolution...

Episode 2, Part 1 - Music:  “Music is the language of my dialogue with that which I perceive to be sacred.” When Charles Baudelaire’s famous poem “Perfume Exotique” was translated into Turkish by Orhan Veli Kanık, Kanık made a particularly crafty choice. As a poet himself, instead of repeating the word “exotic,” he tenderly rendered it as “Alıp Götüren Koku” — “The Scent That Carries You Away.” An...

Episode 1, Part 2 - Memory: “"What haunts are not the dead, but the gaps left within us by the secrets of others" Magnificent memories and amazing fears! In 2017, Kerem Soyyılmaz and his family decided to renovate their grandparents’ house in their village of Karacaköy, located in Çatalca, Istanbul. That summer, a gravestone was discovered beneath the foundation of the house: “Here lies the servan...

Episode 1, Part 1 - Memory: “The Struggle of Man Against Power is the Struggle of Memory Against Forgetting” 30th of January, 1923. Signatures were made regarding the Exchange of Populations between Turkey and Greece. Both parties started their agreement with ARTICLE Number 1: Beginning on 1 May 1923, a compulsory exchange (obligatoire) shall be undertaken between Turkish nationals of the Greek Or...

Where to begin... Maybe, why we believed to look at the Population Exchange that took place between Turkey and Greece almost 100 years ago is still meaningful to understand migration today. Migrants are becoming more and more a part of our daily lives. In the rush of our urban lives, the presence of the migrants as “the other” is becoming more present yet invisible at the same time. In Izmir, once...