Daily Sabah turns one

This is a matter of great pride for media diversity and Turkish democracy. The Turkish media, which consists of hundreds of newspapers and thousands of columnists with differing and often contrary political, cultural and social viewpoints, are able to write anything they want. Media outlets can harshly criticize any institution and person, including, but not exclusive, to top government and military officials and other leaders.

Newspapers voicing their criticism unimpeded is key to democracy in Turkey. One cannot argue that this was the case in past decades. Hundreds of people were jailed for airing their opinions. However, since early last decade, many anti-democratic articles in the Constitution were either removed or changed. The state of today's Turkey is immeasurably better than what it was 15 years ago.

No one can claim there is no room for improvement in the Turkish media. There needs to be some progress in media ethics and media independence, especially in the ownership structure of news outlets as well as considerable improvement in the standard of journalism.

Still, the current improved state of the media in Turkey is often misrepresented due to manipulative disinformation campaigns. There is a huge difference between how things truly are in Turkey and how certain people and groups portray it to be. It is a fact that there is serious political tension and clashes in Turkey. Certain groups try to exploit this tension in accordance with their political objectives through disinformation and manipulation.

Daily Sabah was founded at such a juncture. In an environment where political clashes are manipulated and misrepresented for incremental political benefits, with a team faithful to the universal values of journalism, Daily Sabah became one of the most trustworthy news sources in the country. Within its first year, Daily Sabah was able to earn the trust of its readers. Stories were built on facts. Stories unsupported by facts or sources were not printed. The quality of news stories was never compromised and consequently Daily Sabah reached a respected status in the Turkish media.

Through editorials published at regular intervals, a first for the Turkish media, it showed where it stood on some very complicated national and international issues. In its opinion and columns pages it was able to give voice to a diverse array of writers who viewed developments from very unique perspectives. Its topical culture, lifestyle and feature pages provide its readers with the best coverage of social life in the country.

Just as it has since its inception, Daily Sabah will continue to defend human rights, freedom of expression and democracy through fact-based news stories, comprehensive analyses and sound and well-argued opinion pieces and columns. Daily Sabah has no intention to cut speed as it celebrates the end of its first year. It is expanding its objectives and will soon come out in Russian, Arabic and German versions. Daily Sabah aims to become the most trusted and respected news source not only in Turkey, but also in a region ranging from Eastern Europe to Central Asia and from the Balkans to the Middle East.