With February 2018 coming to a close, it's time to look at Daily Sabah's most read categories and the underlying reasons for our reader's preferences.

It is clear that this month readers were very focused on Turkey's ongoing military operation in Afrin, Syria. Not only has Operation Olive Branch caused a huge influx of news articles in the "War on Terror" subcategory but it also showed up in both the "Columns" and "Editorial" entries.

This month, our readers paid attention to news articles that showed the current climate and at the same time, they seem to have concentrated on opinion based entries for commentary on the complex situation at hand.

Without further ado, let's get right to it.

"Politics" continues to hold onto first place with two more entries compared to last month. It holds an impressive 18 news articles in the daily top 10 most read articles' lists in February. Amongst its subcategories, "War on Terror" is the clear winner with a total of 10 entries to its name. The next most read subcategory was "Diplomacy" with seven news articles making it on the list.

Meanwhile, the remaining entry in the category was listed without a subcategory.

Second place is a shared one this month as both "Business" and "Columns" made quite a leap compared to previous months with five entries apiece.

In "Business," the majority of the entries were listed without a subcategory with three entries. The subcategories of "Energy" and "Defense" had a single news article each.

"Columns" managed to reach an all-time high this month, both in placement and the number of entries. The writers were quite varied too as the articles in question belonged to İlnur Çevik, Fahrettin Altun, Beril Dedeoğlu, Hakkı Öcal and Emre Gönen.

Coming third is the "World" category with four entries. Clearly this category was affected by the recent tensions and the operation in Syria. After all, three of the news articles that made it on the list belonged to the "Syrian Crisis" subcategory while the remaining entry was listed under "Europe."

Fourth place is shared by "Turkey" and "Life," which both managed to appear on the top 10 lists three times. In the case of "Turkey," there was a rare subcategory that garnered attention this month in the form of two entries in "Education." The remaining news article belonged to the "Istanbul" subcategory.

"Life" on the other hand had its three news articles evenly distributed amongst its subcategories: "History," "Feature" and "Science."

Finally, we have "Opinion" with two articles. Both of those belonged to its "Editorial" subcategory, showing clearly that our readers paid close attention to Daily Sabah's take on the recent events with its "Local Perspective and Global Vision."

With the focused nature of the month along with the heavily increased attention on commentary pieces, February managed to break the mold when it comes to the usual order of business in these monthly review articles. We will see whether this will prove to be a trend or not next month.