Yavuz Baydar

Oct 1, 2014Editorial Board

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Representative of the Boston Global Forum Turkey  

Yavuz Baydar has been a journalist for 35 years.

In December 2013, Baydar co-founded the independent media platform, P24, Punto24, to monitor the media sector of Turkey, as well as organizing surveys, and training workshops.

Currently, he writes opinion columns in English for daily Today’s Zaman on Turkey’s domestic and foreign policy issues related to Turkey, and media matters. His opinion articles appeared at the New York Times, the Guardian, Süddeutsche Zeitung, El Pais – and Al Jazeera website.

Baydar  blogs with the Huffington Post and Al Jazeera, sharing his his analysis and views on Turkish politics, the Middle East, Balkans, Europe, U.S-Turkish relations, human rights, free speech, press freedom, history, etc.

Baydar writes, too, regularly opinion columns in Turkish for daily Bugün, published in Istanbul, Turkey.

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, after his self-critical columns on journalistic flaws and fabricated news stories.

Baydar worked as producer and news presenter in Swedish Radio &TV Corp. (SR) Stockholm, Sweden; as correspondent for Scandinavia and Baltics for Turkish daily Cumhuriyet between 1980-1992, and the BBC World Service, in early 1990’s. He studied informatics, cybernetics and, later, journalism in the University of Stockholm.

Baydar served as president of the U.S. based International Organizaton of News Ombudsmen (ONO) between 2003-2004. He is a member of the World Editors Forum (WEF).

Baydar has recently been given the Special Award of the European Press Prize (EPP), for ‘excellence in journalism’, which he shared with the Guardian and Der Spiegel.

He was also awarded the Umbria Journalism Award, Italy, in March 2014.

Baydar was a Shorenstein Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School, in the Fall 2014 term, where he wrote a discussion paper on the growing threats over journalism in Turkey.