Teyit has been working for six years to interpret sometimes wild claims made in news media and online.
- OZAN KOSE/AFP via Getty Images
ISTANBUL — As Turkey heads toward its most closely contested elections in 20 years, a group of independent fact-checkers is preparing to unravel the country’s partisan media environment.
Teyit (meaning corroboration or verification in Turkish) is a nonprofit enterprise established six years ago to verify or refute claims made in traditional news outlets and on social media.
The thousands of claims checked by Teyit’s fact-checkers cover a diverse range of subjects and not just the partisan assertions of political actors. The 10 most recent of the 3,325 analyses carried out concern soccer and poetry as well as politics.
Turkey is due to hold presidential and parliamentary elections by June 2023. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan faces the challenge of producing some positive news for voters who are struggling with the country’s worst economic crisis under his two-decade rule.
Most opinion polls show the opposition currently leading the race, even though Erdogan has rallied in recent months.
The media landscape, meanwhile, remains widely fractured, although the vast bulk of the traditional outlets lies in the hands of the government and its supporters.
“The news media is highly polarized,” Teyit founder Mehmet Atakan Foca told Al-Monitor. “The sources where you can get objective news do not exceed five fingers of a hand."
“While the mainstream...
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