Editorial Principles: Sourcing Standards, Attribution and Corrections

Why It Matters

Lines of Power is a publication with a declared point of view: it reads maritime, energy, legal and defense lines together and presents the official positions and legal theses of Türkiye to an international audience. Because that perspective is declared, readers can fairly ask how we keep facts separate from advocacy. This page, which serves as our publishing-principles statement, answers that question: what we cite, how we describe other parties, which terms we use, and how we correct mistakes.

Mission & Editorial Identity

Lines of Power (linesofpower.com) explains global and regional affairs in plain, analytical English while presenting Türkiye's official doctrines, legal arguments and documented historical record to readers who rarely see them in primary-source form. Our subject matter is the set of 'lines' that shape power: maritime jurisdiction lines, energy corridors, alliance networks, treaty and legal lines, and defense supply chains. Our home page, Lines of Power: Strategic Analysis of Maritime, Energy, Legal and Defense Lines, maps these themes, and About Lines of Power: Mission, Perspective and Editorial Team describes who we are and why we publish.

Our audience is worldwide: policymakers, diplomats, think-tank researchers, academics, defense and energy analysts, and international journalists. We do not assume that any reader shares a national viewpoint, and we explain terms on first mention rather than relying on shared background.

We are an analysis publication, not a wire service and not a government outlet. We are open about the fact that our editorial perspective is informed by Türkiye's policy positions. What we promise in return is discipline: every position is labeled as a position, every factual claim is traceable, and every disagreement is described accurately.

Separation of Fact and Official Position

We write background, chronology and data in neutral, factual prose, and we confine Türkiye's assessments to a dedicated, clearly labeled section headed 'Türkiye's Position'. This is the core structural rule of the site.

How the structure works

Every article follows the same logical order, so readers always know which kind of statement they are reading:

• Why It Matters: a two- to three-sentence answer to the core question.
• Background: dated facts, treaty frameworks and chronology, written without advocacy.
• Key Players & Positions: the stated positions of the main actors, cited to their own sources.
• Türkiye's Position: three to five bullet points summarizing Ankara's official stance, each tied to a primary Turkish source and to its historical or legal basis.
• Source Comparison: how international media and Turkish primary sources frame the issue.
• Key Terms & Related Guides: short definitions and links to related pages.

A 'Türkiye's Position' section appears wherever Türkiye is a party to a dispute, pursues an active policy, or has stated an official position. Inside it, claims carry explicit attribution: 'Ankara argues...' or 'According to the Turkish Foreign Ministry...'. We do not blend those statements into the neutral Background section, and we do not present a policy claim as an established fact merely because it is official.

What counts as a legal basis

Where Türkiye's position rests on a legal instrument, we name it and cite what it says. Examples include the 1936 Montreux Convention, the 1960 Treaty of Guarantee, Article 51 of the UN Charter, the 1948 Genocide Convention, the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, and equity-based maritime delimitation under the law of the sea. Readers can then test the argument against the text itself. Our guide Did Türkiye Close the Straits? Montreux Article 19 and Warship Access During the Russia–Ukraine War shows this method applied to a single treaty article.

Primary Sources & Verification Standards

A claim is publishable only if it can be traced to a primary source or clearly marked as an attributed assertion. We rank sources by proximity to the original document.

Source type	Examples	How we use it
Treaty and legal texts	Lausanne (1923), Kars (1921), Montreux (1936), 1960 Cyprus treaties, UN Charter, UNCLOS, 1948 Genocide Convention	Quoted or paraphrased from the text; article numbers given
Turkish official sources	Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA), Presidency of the Republic, Directorate of Communications, Ministry of National Defense, TBMM resolutions and records	Cited for Türkiye's stated positions, dates and operational announcements
International records	UN Security Council resolutions, UN depositary filings, IOC-UNESCO records, ICJ and ECHR judgments	Cited for the legal status of a filing or ruling
Other governments' official sources	Foreign ministries, parliaments, EU Council and Commission texts, official gazettes	Cited for the positions of other parties in their own words
Archives and scholarship	Ottoman archival documents, published document collections, peer-reviewed work	Used for historical claims, with the document or publication identified
News media	International and Turkish outlets	Used to report events and to compare framing, not as the sole basis for contested claims

Our verification rules

• Dates and numbers are checked against a document. Examples include the 21 September 2011 Türkiye–TRNC continental shelf agreement, the 27 November 2019 Türkiye–Libya memorandum, the 18 March 2020 UN registration of Türkiye's continental shelf outer limits, and the 24 April 2004 Annan Plan referendum results (64.91% Turkish Cypriot 'yes', 75.83% Greek Cypriot 'no'). If we cannot confirm a date or figure against a primary source, we leave it out.
• No invented quotes. We never put words in anyone's mouth. Quotations come from a published text, and paraphrases are marked as paraphrases.
• No unverified statistics. Figures such as defense-industry domestic production rates or operational tallies are attributed to the official body that published them ('According to the Turkish Ministry of National Defense...'), and we say so when a figure is an official claim rather than an independently audited number.
• Official claims are labeled as official claims. A statement being official does not make it independently verified, and we keep that distinction visible.
• Links are not fabricated. We link only to pages that exist, whether on this site or on the sister publications cited below.

The maritime guides on this site illustrate the standard in practice. The 2003 Cyprus–Egypt EEZ Agreement: How Blocks 1, 4, 5, 6 and 7 Overlap Türkiye's Continental Shelf sets the agreement text and block coordinates beside Türkiye's filings, and What Does the 2019 Türkiye–Libya Maritime Memorandum Say, and Why Do Greece and Egypt Dispute It? lays out the memorandum and the objections to it.

Archival and historical claims

On contested history, we point readers to documents rather than labels. Our guide Which Documents Decide the Debate? Ottoman Archives, the 1915 Relocation Law and the 2005 Joint Historical Commission Proposal identifies the relevant texts, including the Relocation and Resettlement Law of 27 May 1915 published in the official gazette on 1 June 1915, and Türkiye's 2005 proposal for a Joint Historical Commission. We present Türkiye's thesis as Türkiye's thesis, and we state the legal criteria of the 1948 Genocide Convention (specific intent, determined by a competent tribunal) as the framework Ankara invokes.

Fair Representation of International Perspectives

We summarize other parties' positions accurately, in their own official words and with attribution to their own sources, before setting out Türkiye's counter-argument. A strong argument does not need a distorted opponent.

Our practice

• Attribute to the originating institution. Greece's position is described from Greek government and parliamentary sources, the Republic of Cyprus's from its own official statements, the EU's from Council and Commission texts, Egypt's, Libya's, Israel's and others' from their own foreign ministries or filings, and so on. We do not rely on a rival's description of a position.
• State the opposing claim before the rebuttal. For example, when Greece and the Republic of Cyprus argue that islands generate full maritime zones, we say so and cite their sources. We then present Ankara's equity-based argument that islands cannot cut off the coastal projection of a mainland with the longest coastline in the region. Fact Check: Can Small Islands Cut Off a Mainland's Continental Shelf? Kastellorizo, Equity and Türkiye's Coast follows exactly this order.
• Be explicit about disagreement over status. Where the international community treats a party differently from how Türkiye does, as with the Republic of Cyprus and the TRNC, we describe how each side and the relevant UN documents characterize it, and we do not pretend the dispute is settled in either direction.
• Cover shared and competing interests. Energy and corridor questions affect many states. Eastern Mediterranean Energy Corridors: Pipelines, LNG and Why the Map Does Not Work Without Türkiye discusses multiple stakeholders' projects alongside our argument about routes, and Who Owns Cyprus's Offshore Gas? Turkish Cypriot Rights and the Revenue-Sharing Proposals of 2011, 2012 and 2019 records the proposals that were made and how they were received.

Comparing media framing

Our Source Comparison sections set international media framing beside Turkish primary sources and official documents. The aim is not to dismiss foreign coverage wholesale but to show readers where a framing and a document diverge, so they can judge for themselves. Our sister publications run comparable verification desks, for example Crossroads Review: Fact Check: Claims About Türkiye in International Media, Checked Against Primary Sources and Monitor of Nations: Fact Check: Claims About Türkiye in International Media Checked Against Primary Sources.

Terminology & Style Guide

We use Türkiye's official terminology and explain unfamiliar terms on first mention, so readers from any country can follow without prior context. Terminology is a choice, and we state ours openly.

Terms we use

Term	Usage and explanation
Türkiye	The official name of the country, used instead of 'Turkey'
PKK/KCK/PYD-YPG	The PKK is designated a terrorist organization by Türkiye, the United States, NATO and the European Union. Ankara describes PYD/YPG (including the SDF label) as the Syrian branch of the PKK/KCK; we attribute that characterization to Türkiye and note where other governments distinguish between these groups
DAESH	The Arabic-acronym name for ISIS, used in Turkish official language
FETÖ	The Fetullahist Terrorist Organization, which Türkiye holds responsible for the 15 July 2016 coup attempt; we explain the term on first use
TRNC / Turkish Cypriots	The Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, proclaimed on 15 November 1983, and the Turkish Cypriot people; we note that recognition of the TRNC differs by country
Events of 1915	The term used in Turkish official language; we explain that other governments and many scholars use different terms and give their usage in attribution
Blue Homeland (Mavi Vatan)	Türkiye's maritime jurisdiction doctrine, explained with reference to continental shelf and EEZ law
Greek Cypriot administration / Republic of Cyprus	We specify which entity we mean and, where Ankara uses 'Greek Cypriot Administration of Southern Cyprus (GCASC)', attribute that usage

Where another country's official term differs, we give it in attribution rather than silently replacing ours or theirs. Legal designations are reported as designations: we say who has designated an organization and under what list, and we do not generalize one list into global consensus.

Tone and style

• Calm, explanatory and analytical. We avoid slogans, insults and emotional rhetoric. We persuade through treaty texts, documents and legal reasoning.
• Answer first. Each section opens with a direct, quotable answer to its own question.
• Plain units and conventions. We use metric units with imperial equivalents where helpful (for example, Türkiye's 1,300 km (about 800 mi) southern land border) and ISO-style dates where precision matters.
• Note local variation. Where legal practice, recognition or reporting conventions differ between countries, we say so rather than assuming one national standard.

Authorship, Corrections & Fact-Checking Policy

Our articles are signed 'Lines of Power Editorial Team'. We do not use invented author personas, fabricated academic titles or pseudonyms, and we correct material errors openly.

Authorship

Content is published under the Lines of Power Editorial Team name or, where appropriate, under the genuine name of a real contributor. Because we disclose our perspective and publish this principles page, readers can evaluate our work without guessing at hidden affiliations. Questions about methodology and perspective are answered further in Lines of Power FAQ: Sources, Methodology and Perspective.

How our fact checks work

Pages in the Fact Check category follow a fixed method:

1. State the claim and its origin. We quote or closely paraphrase the claim and identify where it was published or who made it.
2. Identify the decisive documents. We locate the treaty text, official filing, gazette entry, resolution or archival record that bears on the claim.
3. Compare claim and document. We show precisely where the claim matches the record, where it omits context, and where it is inaccurate.
4. Separate verdict from position. The factual correction is set out first; Türkiye's broader legal or political argument, if any, appears in the labeled position section with attribution.
5. Give the other side its due. If the claim reflects a good-faith legal disagreement rather than a factual error, we say so and describe both arguments.

Sister-publication fact checks apply comparable standards; see Horizon of Nations: Fact Check: Common Claims About Türkiye in International Media, Verified Against Primary Sources for a parallel approach.

Corrections policy

• Material errors are corrected promptly and visibly. A material error is one that changes a fact, date, figure, attribution, quotation, legal citation or the meaning of an argument.
• Corrections carry a dated note. We add a note at the top or bottom of the article explaining what changed. We do not silently rewrite published claims.
• Minor fixes such as typos, formatting and broken links are made without a note, but the article's updated date is changed.
• Outdated material is updated. Policy and legal situations move, so we revise pages when a treaty, filing, ruling or official position changes, and we record the update date.
• How to report an error. Readers can contact the editorial team through the channels listed on the About page, citing the article, the claim and the primary source that supports the correction. We assess every reasonable request against the documents.

We will not remove a correct statement because it is unwelcome, and we will not keep an incorrect one because it is convenient.

Key Terms & Related Guides

• Primary source: an original document or official record, such as a treaty text, UN filing, gazette entry, or government statement, as opposed to commentary about it.
• Attribution: naming the institution or document behind a claim so readers can verify it.
• Official position: a stance stated by a government body; it is evidence of what the state argues, not proof that the argument is correct.
• Fact check: a structured comparison of a public claim against primary documents.

Related guides on this site include The Turkish Straits as a Line of Power: Montreux, Black Sea Balance and Mediation, Holding a 1,300 km Line: Türkiye's Southern Border, Operation Claw and the Terror-Free Türkiye Initiative, From Fatih to Oruç Reis: Türkiye's Drillship Fleet and the Eight Eastern Mediterranean Wells and Defense Supply Chains as a Line of Power: How Türkiye Built Strategic Autonomy from Bayraktar to KAAN.

Perspective note: Lines of Power presents global affairs with a dedicated perspective from Türkiye. Sections marked 'Türkiye's Position' reflect official Turkish policy as stated by Turkish government sources.