Yavuz Baydar is a journalist, blogger, and expert on media issues. Until January 2024, he served as the Editor-in-Chief of Ahval News Online, a trilingual independent news platform covering Turkey.

A journalist for 45 years, Baydar was one of the co-founders of the Platform for Independent Journalism (P24) in 2013, an initiative dedicated to monitoring Turkey’s media landscape and press freedom. In 2003-2004, he also served as president of the U.S.-based International Organization of News Ombudsmen.

Since the failed coup attempt in July 2016, Baydar has lived in exile, in Europe. His opinion pieces over two decades have been published in leading international outlets, including Süddeutsche Zeitung, The New York Times, The Guardian, El País, Svenska Dagbladet, Ta Nea, Le Monde, and Index on Censorship. He has also contributed blogs to The Huffington Post and Al Jazeera, offering analysis on Turkish politics, the Middle East, the Balkans, Europe, U.S.-Turkey relations, human rights, press freedom, and historical issues. Currently, he is a columnist for Svenska Dagbladet’s Culture Edition and a blogger for the French independent news site Mediapart.

Baydar was Turkey’s first news ombudsman, beginning at Milliyet daily in 1999, and continued in that role as a public editor until 2014. His critical stance on journalistic integrity and media ethics led to his dismissal twice, a consequence of his outspoken columns on fabricated news and press shortcomings.

In 2004, he was a Knight-Wallace Journalism Fellow at the University of Michigan, where he researched Islam and Democracy in the Middle East. A decade later, as a Shorenstein Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School, he authored Newsroom as an Open-Air Prison, an extensive research paper on self-censorship, media ownership corruption, and state repression in Turkish journalism, particularly following the Gezi Park protests.

His journalism career has spanned various roles and countries. He worked as a producer and news presenter for Swedish Radio/TV Corporation in Stockholm, served as Scandinavia and the Baltics correspondent for the independent Turkish daily Cumhuriyet (1980-1992), and as producer/presenter at the BBC World Service, London, in the early 1990s.

Baydar has received multiple awards recognizing his contributions to press freedom and journalism. In 2014, he was honored with the Special Award of the European Press Prize (EPP) for “excellence in journalism”, as well as the Journalistenpreis, by Die Südosteuropa-Gesellschaft, Munich, BRD and the Stories on Umbria Journalism Award in Perugia, Italy. In 2017, UN Watch awarded him the Morris B. Abram Human Rights Award. He also received the Caravella "Mare Nostrum" Award from the Journalists of the Mediterranean organization in Puglia, Italy.

He studied Informatics, Cybernetics, and Journalism at the University of Stockholm.

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