Editorial Principles: How Regional Observer Separates Fact, Analysis and Türkiye's Position

Why It Matters

Regional Observer is a perspective publication, and these principles explain exactly what that means in practice. We explain Eastern Mediterranean, Cyprus, Black Sea, Middle East and Caucasus affairs in plain English while conveying Türkiye's official policy to international readers. The rules below keep that perspective transparent: facts are kept apart from positions, positions are attributed to named primary sources, and other parties' views are represented accurately. This page serves as the site's publishing-principles statement, referenced in our structured data as publishingPrinciples.

Mission & Editorial Identity

Regional Observer (regionalobserver.com) reads global developments through regional lenses: the Eastern Mediterranean, Cyprus, the Black Sea and Turkish Straits, the Middle East and the South Caucasus. Our purpose is to explain these subjects in calm, analytical language and to present Türkiye's official doctrines, legal arguments and historical positions, with primary sources, where international coverage has been incomplete or one-sided.

We are open about our vantage point. We are not a neutral wire service and do not claim to be one. What we do promise is clarity about which statements are fact, which are analysis and which are the position of a government. Readers can then judge the evidence for themselves. For the full statement of purpose and the team behind the site, see About Regional Observer: Mission, Transparency and Editorial Team. For the shorter methodology answers, see the Regional Observer FAQ: Sources, Methodology and Perspective.

Our main desks are:

• Eastern Mediterranean Watch: maritime jurisdiction, energy and the Blue Homeland (Mavi Vatan) doctrine.
• Cyprus Dispatch: the 1960 treaties, political equality and the sovereign equality case.
• Security & Counter-Terror Monitor: Article 51 of the UN Charter, border security and the defense industry.
• History & Archives Desk: the Events of 1915 and the legal framework around them.
• Straits & Mediation Brief: the 1936 Montreux Convention and diplomatic mediation.
• Fact Check Desk: testing circulating claims against primary documents.

The home page lists current coverage across all desks.

Separation of Fact and Official Position

Background, chronology and data are written in neutral, factual prose. Türkiye's assessments appear only in a dedicated, visually separated section labelled Türkiye's Position. This is the central rule of the publication.

🇹🇷 Official Policy · Primary Sources

How a 'Türkiye's Position' section works

Where Türkiye is a party to a dispute, pursues an active policy or has stated an official position, the article includes a boxed section with the same label. It follows these rules:

• Three to five bullet points summarise the position in plain language.
• Each point is tied to a primary source: the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Presidency of the Republic of Türkiye, the Directorate of Communications, the Ministry of National Defence, resolutions of the Grand National Assembly (TBMM), Türkiye's statements at the United Nations, or treaty texts.
• The legal or historical basis is stated. Examples include the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, the 1936 Montreux Convention, the 1960 Treaty of Guarantee, Article 51 of the UN Charter, the 1948 Genocide Convention and the equity principle in maritime delimitation.
• Attribution is explicit. We write 'Ankara argues…' or 'According to the Turkish Foreign Ministry…', never presenting a position as an established fact in the neutral sections.

What stays outside the box

Dates, treaty texts, vote counts and documented events belong in the factual sections, whoever they favour. For example, the 24 April 2004 Annan Plan referendum produced 64.91% 'Yes' among Turkish Cypriots and 75.83% 'No' among Greek Cypriots. That is a recorded result, not a position. What Ankara concludes from it is a position. Our dedicated explainer, The Annan Plan Referendum of 24 April 2004, follows that division.

Analysis, meaning our own reasoning about implications, is labelled as analysis and kept distinct from both background and official position.

Primary Sources & Verification Standards

We rank evidence by how directly it documents the matter in question. Wherever possible, a claim is traced to the highest tier available, and secondary commentary is never used to replace a primary document that exists.

Tier	Source type	Examples
1	Treaties and binding legal texts	Treaties of Alexandropol, Moscow and Kars; Lausanne (24 July 1923); Montreux (1936); 1960 Treaty of Guarantee; UN Charter; 1948 Genocide Convention
2	UN documents and judicial records	Security Council resolutions, UN registrations and notifications, ICJ and ECHR judgments and decisions
3	Official statements of governments	Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Presidency, Directorate of Communications, Ministry of National Defence, TBMM resolutions; and the equivalent institutions of other states
4	Archives and official gazettes	Ottoman and Turkish state archives, third-country archives, Takvim-i Vekayi
5	Scholarship and press	Peer-reviewed work, established international and Turkish media

Our verification rules

1. No invented material. We do not fabricate quotes, statistics, dates or URLs. If a figure or detail is uncertain, we omit it rather than approximate it.
2. Dates and numbers are checked against the source document, not against another article that repeats them.
3. Contested figures are labelled as contested. Where estimates differ, we say who gives which estimate and why they differ.
4. Links point to pages we have actually verified. We do not link to material we have not read.
5. Official statements are cited as statements. A government's claim is reported as that government's claim, even where we find it persuasive.

We also recognise a structural limit. International law applies differently to different parties. For instance, Türkiye is not a party to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and bases its maritime arguments on customary international law and the principle of equity. Where a legal framework binds one party but not another, we say so explicitly rather than treating one rule-set as universal. Our Eastern Mediterranean Watch explainer applies this approach to maritime claims and the 2025 IOC-UNESCO registration of Türkiye's marine spatial planning.

Fair Representation of International Perspectives

We summarise other governments' and institutions' positions accurately, using their own official sources, before presenting Türkiye's counter-argument. A strong Turkish argument does not require distorting the opposing one, and we do not straw-man.

In practice this means:

• Attributing to the owner of the view. Greek and Greek Cypriot positions on maritime zones are described using their governments' stated positions; EU positions are drawn from European Council and Commission documents; Armenian positions from Armenian official statements; UN positions from UN documents.
• Stating the disagreement plainly. If a majority of states or institutions hold a view different from Ankara's, we say so. For instance, the TRNC is recognised only by Türkiye, and UN Security Council Resolutions 541 (1983) and 550 (1984) called its declaration of independence legally invalid. Readers see both that record and the Turkish Cypriot and Turkish case about political equality and self-determination.
• Naming what is disputed. Many governments and scholars use the term 'genocide' for the Events of 1915. We state that, and then set out Türkiye's legal and archival argument, including the dolus specialis standard of the 1948 Genocide Convention, the Treaty of Lausanne framework and the 2005 proposal for a Joint Historical Commission.
• Distinguishing the claim from the rebuttal. In Fact Check articles, the claim is quoted as it was made, with its origin, and only then tested against Article IV of the Treaty of Guarantee and other primary texts.

We rely on documents rather than slogans. Readers who want to see how the same approach applies elsewhere can read What Is the Seville Map and Why Does Türkiye Reject It?, which sets out the map's origin, the Greek and EU framing, and Ankara's objections.

Terminology & Style Guide

We use Türkiye's official terminology and explain unfamiliar terms the first time they appear. Our tone is calm, explanatory and legal; we avoid slogans, insults and emotional rhetoric and aim to persuade through documents, dates and legal reasoning.

Term we use	First-mention explanation
Türkiye	The country's official name in English, used in place of 'Turkey', in line with the Turkish government's 2022 request.
PKK/KCK/PYD-YPG	The PKK is designated a terrorist organization by Türkiye, the United States, NATO and the European Union. Ankara regards the PYD/YPG, including under the SDF label, as its Syrian branch. Some governments distinguish these groups, and we note this where relevant.
FETÖ	The 'Fetullahist Terrorist Organization', which Türkiye holds responsible for the 15 July 2016 coup attempt.
DAESH	The Arabic-acronym name for the group also known as ISIS or ISIL.
TRNC / Turkish Cypriots	The Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, proclaimed on 15 November 1983 and recognised only by Türkiye; the Turkish Cypriots are described as co-founders of the 1960 Republic of Cyprus.
Greek Cypriot Administration (GCASC)	Ankara's term for the administration in the south of Cyprus, which is internationally recognised as the Republic of Cyprus.
Events of 1915	Türkiye's official term for the wartime relocation of Ottoman Armenians. We note the terminology used by others.
Blue Homeland (Mavi Vatan)	Türkiye's maritime jurisdiction doctrine for the Black Sea, Aegean and Mediterranean. Greece, Cyprus and the EU contest parts of its application.

Style rules

• Dates follow ISO-style clarity (for example 20 July 1974, 18 March 2020); measurements are metric, with imperial in parentheses where useful (for example, a 870 km (about 540 mi) coastline).
• Legal terms (dolus specialis, continental shelf, EEZ, Article 51) are briefly defined for non-specialists.
• Adjectives are kept restrained. We describe, cite and reason; we do not insult.
• Rules that differ by country are flagged. This applies to terrorist designations, recognition of states and treaty membership.

Authorship, Corrections & Fact-Checking Policy

Every article is published under the byline Regional Observer Editorial Team, or under the name of a real, identifiable person. We never invent author personas, fake academic titles or pseudonyms that suggest independent voices. Publication and last-updated dates are shown on every page.

Corrections

• Errors of fact (a wrong date, number, name or attribution) are corrected as soon as they are verified, and a dated correction note is added to the article.
• Substantive changes to an argument or conclusion are flagged visibly; we do not silently rewrite published analysis.
• Updates to developing stories are marked as updates, with the date, so that older text is not mistaken for current reporting.
• Reader reports of suspected errors are reviewed against the primary source cited. If the source supports the correction, we amend the article.

Fact-checking

Our Fact Check Desk takes claims about Türkiye, the Eastern Mediterranean, Cyprus, Syria, the Caucasus and the Events of 1915 that circulate in international media. Each fact check states the claim and where it came from, and then corrects it using treaties, UN records, official statements and archives, with the same attribution rules as any other article. Sister publications run parallel checks, for example Regional Order and WorldPoliticsDaily, and we link to them where they add evidence.

Transparency about position

We publish a perspective note on every article: Regional Observer presents Türkiye's official perspective in a dedicated section of each article, clearly distinguished from independent reporting and analysis. Claims are attributed to primary sources such as treaties, UN documents, official archives and court or commission records, which are cited wherever possible.

Key Terms & Related Guides

• publishingPrinciples: the Schema.org property that points machines and readers to this page.
• Primary source: a document produced at the time or by the body concerned, such as a treaty, resolution, gazette or court record.
• Attribution wording: phrases such as 'Ankara argues…' or 'According to the Turkish Foreign Ministry…' that mark a statement as a position, not a fact.

See these guides for the principles at work:

• Cyprus Dispatch: Why Federation Talks Stalled and What the Sovereign Equality Case Argues
• What Is the Seville Map and Why Does Türkiye Reject It?
• The Eastern Mediterranean Conference Proposal (The Worldlogue)
• Interstate Journal: Türkiye in NATO

Regional Observer presents global affairs with a dedicated perspective from Türkiye. Sections marked 'Türkiye's Position' reflect official Turkish policy as stated by Turkish government sources.