KARACHI: With almost a hundred years of reporting news and stories from around the world, the Anadolu Agency, founded on April 6, 1920, made its presence felt at a gathering of media representatives from Pak­i­stan at a local hotel on Thursday.

With a passion for reporting on human stories, the Anadolu Agency has bureaus in almost 40 countries, including the US, UK, Russia, Germany and China.

With the international outreach the agency boasts of, Anadolu Agency announced its intent to focus on Pakistan.

Mitin Mutanoglu, deputy dire­ctor general and editor in chief of Anadolu Agency, expre­ssed the desire to open venues in Pakistan, and lauded the information ministry for facilitating this endeavour.

“It is great to be in Pakistan, a country which has historical and great relations with Turkey. We are all over the world and in Pakistan we have to open a bureau in Islamabad.”

He spoke about the need for the two states to come together even more so. “We believe the media can play a very positive role in this. Turkish people love Pakis­tanis, and Pakistanis love Turkish people.

As a news agency our goal is to make these two countries closer and we will serve the Pakistani media with all our facilities, stories, videos, photos, etc.”

Mr Tolga Uçak, Turkish Consul General, spoke about the historical significance of Anadolu Age­ncy.

“This agency is old which was started in the 1920s, even before the establishment of the Turkish Grand National Assem­bly and has become a medium of reliable and objective news in Turkey and the world over. The members that form Anadolu Agency even today have maintained this discipline and should be congratulated.”

He added that Anadolu Agency is one of the biggest networks in the world and will allow greater connectivity and news sharing between Pakistan and Turkey. Anadolu Agency can easily be used by Pakistani media outlets to access news from Turkey and around the world, he added.

It was also shared in a presentation how news agencies and media networks can access the global network of Anadolu Agency which caters to 13 different languages, videos, text and photographs and the news wire system can distribute all this and more through a subscription system.

Published in Dawn, March 15th, 2019