Marking its centennial as a republic, Turkey goes in May to its most critical elections ever - seen as an "existential referendum" between democracy and totalitarian rule. How has the Erdoğan governm...
Yavuz Baydar
Yavuz Baydar is a freelance media commentator and analyst.
He was until March 2024 the Editor-in-Chief of Ahval, a trilingual independent online news site on Turkey. He has been a journalist for nearly 40 years. He was among the co-founders, in 2013, of the independent media platform P24 to monitor the media sector and the state of journalism in his home country.
Baydar has lived outside Turkey since the July 2016 coup attempt.
His opinion articles have appeared in the Süddeutsche Zeitung, the New York Times, the Guardian, El Pais, Svenska Dagbladet and Index on Censorship. Baydar has blogged for the Huffington Post and Al Jazeera, sharing his analysis and views on Turkish politics, the Middle East, Balkans, Europe, U.S-Turkish relations, human rights, free speech, press freedom and history. He also wrote regular opinion columns for the Turkish dailies Today's Zaman, Bugün and Özgür Düşünce.
Turkey’s first news ombudsman, beginning at Milliyet daily in 1999, Baydar worked in the same role as reader representative until 2014. His work included reader complaints with content, and commentary on media ethics. Working in a tough professional climate had its costs; he was twice forced to leave his job as a consequence of his critical columns on journalistic flaws and fabricated news stories. He served as president of the U.S. based International Organizaton of News Ombudsmen in 2003.
In 2014, as a Shorenstein Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School of Government, he completed an extensive research paper on self-censorship, corruption of ownership in Turkish media, state oppression and threats over journalism in Turkey - in the wake of the Gezi Park protests.
Baydar worked as a producer and news presenter for Swedish Radio&TV Corp. in Stockholm, as Scandinavia and the Baltics correspondent for Turkish daily Cumhuriyet 1980-1992, and for the BBC World Service in the early 1990s.
Baydar won the 2014 Special Award of the European Press Prize for 'excellence in journalism' and the 2017 Morris B Abram Human Rights Award by UN Watch. He also received the 2014 Stories on Umbria Journalism Award in Perugia, Italy and the Caravella 'Mare Nostrum' Award, from the Journalists of the Mediterranean organisation in Puglia, Italy.
He studied Informatics, Cybernetics and Journalism at the University of Stockholm.
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Journalism when caught between right-wing extremism and military authoritarianism
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May 3 is the United Nations World Press Freedom Day. It is, in the words of the UN, the opportunity to: > celebrate the fundamental principles of press freedom > assess the state of press free...
Awards ceremony of the fifth edition of the Stories on Umbria Journalism Award, set up and managed by the Chambers of Commerce of Perugia and Terni. Moderator: Bruno Gambacorta, president of the ju...
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