A method and apparatus for turbo encoding with a contention-free interleaver is provided herein. During operation an input block of size K′ is received. The original input block and the interleaved input block are encoded to obtain a codeword block, wherein the original input block is interleaved using an interleaver of size K′ and a permutation π(i)=(f1×i+f2×i2)mod K′, where 0≦i≦K′−1 is the sequential index of the symbol positions after interleaving, π(i) is the symbol index before interleaving corresponding to position i, K′ is the interleaver size in symbols, and f1 and f2 are the factors defining the interleaver. The values of K′, f1, f2 are taken from at least one row of a table. The codeword block is transmitted through the channel.