Earlier in April luminaries from some of Europe’s most trusted state-funded news agencies gathered for their annual meeting to discuss what they all agreed was a singular threat to their countries’ way of life: disinformation. The president of news media at Axel Springer spoke of the noble role of journalism delivering “reliable information.” The global news director for Agence France Presse spoke about reinforcing a culture of verified data, especially during elections.

A senior executive from Turkey’s state-backed Anadolu Agency also spoke during the two-day meeting. Ural Yesil, explained how his team had built an electronic tracking device that shows where Anadolu photos are republished, specially by hostile pro-Kurdish media, as a way to fight “black propaganda.”

What he didn’t include in his presentation was the fact that Anadolu Agency, or AA, has become ground zero in Turkey’s information wars. Over the last four years it has reversed its editorial objectivity to provide ardently pro-government points of view, ranging from charges of electoral fraud, libelous accusations against government critics and publishing misleadingly optimistic economic data to its subscribers in 93 countries.

At the time Yesil was speaking, AA was embroiled in a roiling disinformation scandal of its own making -- one where it was accused of helping manipulate news in Turkey’s most recent election.  The agency stopped publicizing results in real time on election night when it appeared that President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s candidate would lose the crucial Istanbul mayoral race to the contender from the main opposition Republican Peoples’ Party, or CHP.