As the Freedom Research Association, we continuously arrange events to maintain our organizational performance. Although we had to halt our face-to-face events due to the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020, we adjusted to the new normal by moving our events to online platforms in order to keep up with our organizational agenda. Also, with the beginning of the pandemic, we were allowed to address a new wave of public policies. As a result, we launched the once in every two weeks “Online Freedom Talks” as a part of our regular Freedom Talks in April 2020, not only to actively perform as an organization, but also to discuss the recently implemented COVID-19 policies in Turkey from the perspective of individual rights and liberties. With these live broadcasts, we aim to increase public awareness on the issue of COVID-19, the consequent policies and how they affect our liberties.
Online Freedom Talks are presented and moderated by Nurettin Kalkan as live broadcasts that host a different guest expert to discuss various topics regarding the new COVID-19 policies and current hot topics in Turkey such as the rule of law, economic freedom, freedom of assembly and association and freedom of speech. The broadcasts consist of 45-minute presentations by experts which are followed by Q&A sessions led by the moderator in which viewers’ questions are directed to the experts for further elaboration. The live broadcast is aired on our social media accounts such as Youtube, Facebook and Twitter and each is recorded simultaneously to be uploaded later on for viewers to watch it after it ends. Online Freedom Talks, which have reached 130 thousand viewers until this time, continue to broadcast due to the high interest of the viewers.
