ANKARA
Anadolu Agency Director General and Board Chairman Kemal Ozturk has said that a great, new and powerful Turkey can change the destiny of the Middle East.
Ozturk made the remarks at a conference titled “New Middle East, New Turkey, New Media Conference” in Turkey’s Sakarya province , where he gave insights about the recent developments in the country and explained the news agency’s centennial vision onThursday.
The event was organized by Sakarya Metropolitan Municipality.
“Nowadays Turkey is in a national struggle, an existential struggle. Do not think the Gezi protests, Kobani conflict or Kurdish issue came out nowhere, unexpectedly,” Ozturk said.
“A great Turkey, a new Turkey, a powerful Turkey is a country that can change the destiny of the Middle East,” he added.
The director general said Turkey was not any ordinary country. “These lands are full of people who bonded with each other. You cannot break this bond. The love of Turkey is still in the heart of people in the Middle East. The finance sector, media and politicians may not like the new Turkey, but this will change and we all will see it."
Ozturk also spoke at length about the centennial vision of the agency.
“It is an eight year-project. In eight years we aim to become one of the five most influential agencies in the world,” he said.
“As a matter of fact, we were nowhere in the race. Nobody knew or recognized us back then. In the top 100 rankings of the agencies, we were not even in the top 30s or 20s. We were not there, as if we didn’t exist. But at the end of the third year, the number of our daily news broadcasts has increased from 600 to 2,000,” he said.
He said that The Anadolu Agency increased the number of photos it published daily from 600 to 1,900. “We are now already ahead of Reuters…The number of our video productions has increased from 120 to 250. We are ahead of AFP yet we are still quite local. One of our best works is multi-language broadcasting. We are ahead of our competitors in that area as well. As far as production performance is considered, we have already managed to become one of the top eight agencies in the world. But, our goal is to be in the top five,” he said.
Ozturk also highlighted the agency’s increase of Arabic news broadcasting. He said that although AA started Arabic news production much later than its competitors, today it was way ahead of them and led in the number of Arabic news production.
As part of its centennial vision, the agency plans to broadcast in 11 languages by 2020. The agency currently broadcasts in Turkish, Arabic, English, Bosnian, Serbian and Croatian, Russian, Kurdish, and French.
www.aa.com.tr/en
