On the evening of Dec. 6, journalist Nergis Demirkaya sat in the Ankara office of the Human Rights Association (IHD) with a microphone in her hand, asking questions to her guests in a discussion on the latest developments in Turkey. It was a rendition of the program Demirkaya used to host on IMC TV, one of the many channels forcibly shut down since the July 15 coup attempt. This time, however, she had to do without a production-control room and there were no cameras shooting the program. Still, thousands of people watched the discussion, broadcast live on social media by no one else but the 15-strong audience in the hall, whose only equipment was their mobile phone.

The program was part of an alternative media initiative, HaberSIZsiniz (You are the news), launched jointly by journalists left jobless after the putsch and citizens bent on defending their right to information. Demirkaya’s mic and portable audio equipment were borrowed from a trade union. The wall behind her featured a poster depicting a TV screen in shackles — the symbol of the HaberSIZsiniz platform. And because the poster was attached to the wall with a simple sticky tape, it dropped several times during the broadcast.

Demirkaya’s guests were victims of the post-putsch crackdown like her: an academic expelled from university and two managers of a closed-down children’s rights association. Their topic was the Nov. 29 fire that claimed 12 lives at a girls' dorm run by a religious group close to the government. Both in terms of participants and topic, the program was a forum for critical speech, which has become a rarity in the Turkish mainstream media today.

And keeping critical reporting alive is exactly why HaberSIZsiniz was created, Demirkaya told Al-Monitor. Describing how the platform was born, she said, “Jobless journalists, people rejecting the monophonic media and citizens defending their right to information — we all came together, asking what we could do. We wanted to both stand up to the closure of media outlets and cover the real agenda. HaberSIZsiniz was the answer of how to relay uncensored news to the people. Since cellphones are the only thing we have left, we decided to use them for broadcasting, and as a first step we launched a social media account called HaberSIZsiniz.”