1. Cenk Uygur is the co-creator of The Young Turks, a populist sociopolitical news and commentary program.
49 Facts About Cenk Uygur
1. 2.
Cenk Uygur launched and began hosting The Young Turks in 2002.
3.
In 2017, Uygur co-founded the progressive political action committee Justice Democrats.
4.
In 2020, Cenk Uygur was a candidate in both the special election as well as the regularly scheduled election for California's 25th congressional district.
5.
Cenk Uygur lost both elections, placing fourth overall and second among Democrats after receiving six and seven percent of the vote, respectively.
6.
Cenk Uygur announced his candidacy in the 2024 Democratic presidential primaries in October 2023 to pressure President Biden to withdraw, despite not being a natural-born US citizen as required, claiming that the courts could overturn the requirement.
7.
Cenk Uygur was born in Istanbul to a wealthy Turkish family.
8.
The family emigrated to the United States when Cenk Uygur was eight years old, and there Dogan worked as a commercial real estate developer.
9.
Cenk Uygur spent the remainder of his upbringing in East Brunswick, New Jersey, and graduated from East Brunswick High School.
10.
Cenk Uygur was raised in a secular Muslim household, but became more religious during college.
11.
Cenk Uygur received a Juris Doctor degree from Columbia Law School.
12.
Cenk Uygur then started The Young Turks on Sirius Satellite Radio.
13.
Cenk Uygur created the left-wing, progressive talk show The Young Turks with the goal of starting a liberal-leaning political and entertainment show.
14.
Cenk Uygur regularly says that The Young Turks is the largest online news show in the world, and has claimed so since at least 2011.
15.
In September 2011, when Cenk Uygur had been seeking a television platform for The Young Turks for years, a weeknight TV edition of the show was announced on fledgling Current TV, which had low ratings, at 7 pm EST on the network beginning sometime in the fourth quarter of 2011.
16.
Cenk Uygur hired his nephew, Hasan Piker, to work for the show.
17.
On January 21,2011, Cenk Uygur was appointed as the host of the 6 pm Eastern slot on MSNBC as the anchor of a new prime time edition of MSNBC Live, resulting in a rearrangement of the time slots of MSNBC's other prime time shows.
18.
Cenk Uygur filled the time slot for six months, from January through June 2011.
19.
Cenk Uygur's contract ended when he was offered a weekend slot and declined.
20.
Cenk Uygur has supported the removal of corporate donations from the political system, and he said that "campaign finance reform" is the "only one issue" in the United States.
21.
On January 23,2017, Cenk Uygur co-founded the Justice Democrats along with Kyle Kulinski, a political commentator who had been affiliated with Cenk Uygur's Young Turks network.
22.
Cenk Uygur was forced out of the Justice Democrats on December 22,2017, following the discovery of blog posts that he had written in the early 2000s in which he made statements that were described by Justice Democrats leadership as "sexist and racist".
23.
The next day, Cenk Uygur apologized and denounced his past statements in a video on The Young Turks channel on YouTube.
24.
Cenk Uygur said that he wrote the posts while he was still a conservative, before he underwent a political transformation and became a liberal; he asserted that he "had not yet matured" and "was still a conservative who thought that stuff was politically incorrect and edgy".
25.
In mid-November 2019, Cenk Uygur filed to run for Congress in California's 25th district, a seat recently vacated by the resignation of Katie Hill.
26.
Cenk Uygur did this despite the fact that he did not live in the district.
27.
Cenk Uygur ran in two primary elections on March 3,2020: the special election primary to fill the vacant seat through January 2021 and the Democratic primary for the next full term.
28.
Cenk Uygur raised over $100,000 in small donations in the first three hours after announcing his candidacy.
29.
Cenk Uygur criticized his Democratic opponent, Christy Smith, for her opposition to Medicare for All.
30.
Cenk Uygur opposed war with Iran and supported passing the Green New Deal.
31.
Cenk Uygur's candidacy was initially endorsed by US Senator Bernie Sanders, then a leading candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, on December 12,2019.
32.
Cenk Uygur has said that he will run for president of the United States.
33.
In September 2023, Cenk Uygur said that he was preparing to launch a potential challenge to President Joe Biden in the 2024 Democratic Party presidential primaries.
34.
Cenk Uygur said that, if no progressive challenger announced a campaign, he would start his own campaign to attempt to encourage other Democrats to challenge Biden.
35.
Cenk Uygur is a naturalized US citizen, that is to say he became a citizen after his birth.
36.
Cenk Uygur filed for the Nevada ballot that same day, but was not allowed on it after he submitted an altered form.
37.
Cenk Uygur unsuccessfully sued the South Carolina Election Commission and the South Carolina Democratic Party over his exclusion from the ballot.
38.
On December 18,2023, Cenk Uygur's campaign issued a press release indicating that he was on primary ballots for the following states: Minnesota, Oklahoma, Texas, and Vermont.
39.
Cenk Uygur indicated to The Hill in late November 2023 that his campaign had raised more than $250,000 since it started.
40.
Cenk Uygur has called for the Democratic Party to undergo a revitalization process.
41.
Cenk Uygur slowly transitioned away from the Republican Party and conservative politics.
42.
Cenk Uygur has cited the decision to invade Iraq as a "seminal moment" in that transition.
43.
In 2000, Cenk Uygur voted for John McCain in the Republican primaries; however he did not vote for McCain in the 2008 United States presidential election due to his perceived proximity to the Christian right and his views on taxes and waterboarding.
44.
Cenk Uygur supported the presidential campaigns of Bernie Sanders in 2016 and 2020.
45.
In 2010, along with Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Cenk Uygur accepted the "Emperor Has No Clothes Award" from the Freedom From Religion Foundation and later the Humanist Media Award from the American Humanist Association.
46.
In 1991, Cenk Uygur wrote an article in The Daily Pennsylvanian, the student newspaper of the University of Pennsylvania, in which he promoted Armenian genocide denial.
47.
In February 2020, when the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees sought to unionize The Young Turks, Cenk Uygur controversially urged his employees not to do so.
48.
Cenk Uygur allegedly fired employee Jacorey Palmer for his pro-union activities, and, according to an anonymous TYT employee, Cenk Uygur allegedly withheld bonuses and increases from employees who were involved in the union drive.
49.
Cenk Uygur is Turkish-American and is fluent both in Turkish, his native language, and in English.