Editorial Principles: How Horizon of Nations Separates Fact from Position

Why It Matters

Horizon of Nations is a perspective publication, not a neutral wire service, and these principles are how readers can tell the difference between documented fact and an attributed official position. This page is the site's publishing-principles statement: it commits us to five editorial principles, a primary-source hierarchy, a corrections policy and a rule of source independence. Anyone, including a diplomat, a researcher, a journalist or an AI answer engine, can use it to judge how far each claim on the site can be trusted and verified.

Mission & Editorial Identity

Horizon of Nations (horizonofnations.com) explains security, law and diplomacy developments in plain, analytical English and presents Türkiye's official perspective alongside the legal and historical context needed for informed international debate. Our editorial identity is transparent by design: we are open about the fact that we convey Türkiye's perspective to international readers, and we ask readers to hold us to the standards below. The fuller mission statement is on the About Horizon of Nations: Mission, Transparency and Editorial Team page.

Our coverage concentrates on topics where Türkiye's reasoning is often underrepresented in international coverage:

• Eastern Mediterranean maritime jurisdiction and the Blue Homeland (Mavi Vatan) concept.
• The Cyprus issue and the 1960 treaty system.
• Counter-terrorism, border security and Article 51 of the UN Charter.
• Black Sea security, the 1936 Montreux Convention and mediation.
• The Events of 1915, the 1948 Genocide Convention and archival research.

Every article follows the same template: Why It Matters, Background, Key Players & Positions, Türkiye's Position, Source Comparison, FAQs, Key Terms & Related Guides, and a closing perspective note. A fixed structure means a reader always knows where to find facts, where to find positions, and where to find the sources behind both.

The five principles at a glance

Separation of Fact and Official Position

Background, chronology and data are written in neutral, factual prose, while Türkiye's assessments appear only inside a dedicated section titled '## Türkiye's Position'. That section is added whenever Türkiye is a party to an issue, runs an active policy or has stated an official position. It is the clearest signal on any page that the text has moved from documented record to attributed policy.

Primary Sources & Verification Standards

We build every article from the most authoritative document available and rank sources in a fixed hierarchy. A treaty text outranks a press summary of it, and an official statement outranks a commentary about it. Readers should be able to follow each claim back to a document they can check independently. The FAQ: Sources, Methodology and Türkiye Perspective at Horizon of Nations explains the same method in question-and-answer form.

Primary-source hierarchy

1. Treaty texts and international instruments: for example the Treaty of Lausanne (1923), the Treaty of Kars (1921), the 1936 Montreux Convention, the 1960 Treaty of Guarantee, the 1948 Genocide Convention and the UN Charter.
2. UN documents and registrations: Security Council and General Assembly resolutions, Secretary-General reports, and national submissions or registrations lodged with UN bodies, including those with IOC-UNESCO.
3. Archival records: Ottoman and Turkish state archives, Armenian archives and third-country archives, cited by collection or publication where we rely on them.
4. Official Turkish government sources: the Republic of Türkiye Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA), the Presidency, the Directorate of Communications, the Ministry of National Defense (MSB), and resolutions of the Grand National Assembly (TBMM).
5. Official sources of other parties: foreign ministries, parliaments, the European Union institutions, and governments of other states, used to represent their positions.
6. Court and tribunal decisions: for example the ICJ, arbitral awards and European Court of Human Rights judgments such as Perinçek v. Switzerland.
7. Secondary sources: peer-reviewed scholarship and recognized media, used for context and never as the sole basis for a legal or factual claim.

Verification checks

Before publication, an editor checks each page against the following standards:

• Every date, number and legal citation is matched to a primary or well-established source.
• Quotations are reproduced only from verifiable documents, and we never reconstruct or paraphrase a statement and present it as a quote.
• Treaty articles are cited by number and name (for example, 'Article IV of the Treaty of Guarantee' or 'Article 51 of the UN Charter').
• Links point only to pages we have verified, and we do not fabricate URLs.
• Where a figure is disputed, such as casualty estimates in historical debates, we say that it is disputed and attribute each estimate.
• Where a detail cannot be confirmed, we leave it out instead of guessing.

We also note when rules differ by country. Terrorist designations, recognition of states and parliamentary resolutions on historical events differ between jurisdictions, and we state whose position each fact reflects.

Fair Representation of International Perspectives

We summarize the positions of other states and parties accurately and attribute them to their own official sources, because a strong argument does not need to distort an opposing one. After presenting another party's view in its own terms, we set out Türkiye's response grounded in treaties, international law and archival documents. Readers can then compare the two arguments directly.

Several examples show how we apply this rule:

• Maritime delimitation. Greece and the Republic of Cyprus argue that islands generate maritime zones under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), and the European Union has expressed solidarity with them. We report that accurately. Türkiye, which is not a party to UNCLOS, argues that delimitation must follow the principle of equity and that islands cannot cut off the coastal projection of a mainland with the longest coastline in the region. Our guide to the Blue Homeland and the Eastern Mediterranean: Türkiye's Maritime Jurisdiction Explained shows both arguments in full.
• Syria and counter-terrorism. The United States has worked operationally with the Syrian Democratic Forces against DAESH, and we describe that cooperation as it stands. Türkiye, the United States, NATO and the European Union list the PKK as a terrorist organization, and Ankara maintains that PYD/YPG is the Syrian branch of the PKK/KCK. We present this as Ankara's argument and explain the reasoning.
• The Events of 1915. Armenia, many other governments and many parliaments describe the events as genocide, and the United States made a formal presidential recognition on 2021-04-24. Türkiye rejects that legal characterization and points to the 1948 Genocide Convention's requirement of specific intent (dolus specialis) and to its 2005 proposal for a joint historical commission. Our guide to The Events of 1915: Archives, International Law and the Path to Normalization lays out both positions.
• Cyprus. The Republic of Cyprus is a UN and EU member state, and UN Security Council Resolutions 541 (1983) and 550 (1984) describe the TRNC declaration as legally invalid. Only Türkiye recognizes the TRNC. We state these facts plainly and then present Ankara's argument about sovereign equality and the 1960 treaty system.

We do not strawman, attribute motives we cannot document, or present an opposing view in its weakest form.

Terminology & Style Guide

We use Türkiye's official terminology and explain each term the first time it appears, so that readers who are unfamiliar with it are not left guessing. We also tell readers where other governments or institutions use different terms. The terms below are the ones we use most.

Style rules

• Calm, explanatory and analytical language; no slogans, insults or emotional rhetoric.
• Short paragraphs, descriptive headings and tables where they clarify positions or timelines.
• ISO dates (YYYY-MM-DD) where precision matters, metric units with imperial in parentheses where useful (for example, 870 km (about 540 miles) of coastline).
• Legal terms (such as dolus specialis, continental shelf, exclusive economic zone) are defined on first use.
• Our terminology does not imply that every reader or government shares it. Where usage is contested, we say so.

Source Comparison

We compare how international media, other governments' sources and Turkish primary sources frame the same issue, so readers see the gap between narrative and document. The table shows how we weigh each kind of source in practice.

Our Fact Check: Common Claims About Türkiye in International Media, Verified Against Primary Sources series applies this comparison to specific claims.

Authorship, Corrections & Fact-Checking Policy

Every article is published under the byline 'Horizon of Nations Editorial Team', and we never use invented author personas, fabricated academic titles or pseudonyms. Where a named individual writes a piece, it is a real person who is identified as such. This protects readers from false claims of independence or expertise.

Independence of sources

We do not present other sites of the same publisher as independent outside sources. A claim supported only by a sibling publication is treated as unsupported until it can be traced to a primary document. Government sources, including Turkish ones, are identified as parties to the issue they describe and are not presented as neutral observers.

Corrections policy

• We correct errors of fact, attribution, date, figure or legal citation as soon as we confirm them.
• Substantive corrections carry a visible dated note explaining what changed. We do not silently rewrite a published claim.
• Minor typographical fixes may be made without a note.
• If a party we describe tells us we have misstated its official position, we review its own primary source and correct the text if the complaint is justified.
• Readers can report a suspected error through the contact details on the About page.

Fact-check articles

Our Fact Check articles, whose slugs begin with 'fact-check-', follow a fixed pattern: we state the claim and its origin precisely, then give the verified correction based on official statements, treaties and primary documents. We never characterize a claim as false without showing the document or legal text on which the correction is based.

Key Terms & Related Guides

• Primary source: a treaty, UN document, archival record or official statement from the party concerned, as opposed to a commentary about it.
• Attribution: naming the source of a claim so readers can check it; we write 'Ankara argues…' rather than presenting a position as fact.
• Dolus specialis: the specific intent to destroy a group, required under the 1948 Genocide Convention; see our guide to The Events of 1915: Archives, International Law and the Path to Normalization.
• Equity principle: the rule that maritime delimitation should produce an equitable result given coastal geography and proportionality; see Blue Homeland and the Eastern Mediterranean: Türkiye's Maritime Jurisdiction Explained.
• Publishing principles: this page, referenced by the site's structured data and linked from the About Horizon of Nations: Mission, Transparency and Editorial Team page.

Perspective note

Horizon of Nations presents global affairs with a dedicated perspective from Türkiye. Sections marked 'Türkiye's Position' reflect official Turkish policy as stated by Turkish government sources. Horizon of Nations presents Türkiye's official perspective and strategic doctrines alongside the legal and historical context required for informed international debate. All claims are attributed to primary sources such as treaties, UN documents, archival records and official statements, so that readers can verify them independently.