CORRECTS TO ADD BYLINE/CONTRIBUTOR LINE, CORRECT NAME OF INTERNATIONAL ISLAMIC MEDIA CONFERENCE TO INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE OF ISLAMIC MEDIA, CORRECT SPELLING OF NAHDLATUL ULAMA, CORRECTS STYLE ON ANTARA NEWS AGENCY
By Adem Salvarcioglu
JAKARTA (AA) - Two top Anadolu Agency officials have presented the agency's new Islamic World News Package in the Indonesian capital Jakarta.
Deputy Director General Mustafa Ozkaya and International News Editor-in-Chief Faruk Tokat met with Aat Surga Safaat, the editor-in-chief of Indonesia’s official news agency Antara, on Friday to discuss the package along with an agreement signed last year allowing the two agencies to exchange reporters and training.
Under the agreement, Antara reporters will be able to work in Anadolu Agency’s Istanbul and Ankara bureaus, Ozkaya said, adding that Anadolu is ready for cooperation to strengthen the agreement.
"Ozkaya invited Antara news agency reporters to Anadolu Agency’s Turkey bureaus. We believe that our reporters’ knowledge and experience will progress through the exchange program," Safaat said.
Both Ozkaya and Tokat represented Turkey at this week’s International Conference of Islamic Media (ICIM) in Jakarta, during which they met with leading NGO representatives to discuss Anadolu Agency’s soon-to-be-launched Islamic World News Package.
The meeting, attended by representatives from Indonesia’s largest Islamic organizations, including Nahdlatul Ulama, Muhammadiyah, and Dakwah, saw Indonesian-Turkish relations discussed along with Anadolu Agency’s role in reporting news from the Islamic world.
Nahdlatul Ulama is a traditionalist Sunni Islam movement in Indonesia, Muhammadiyah is the second largest Islamic organization in the country with 29 million members, while Dakwah is an independent social organization for study and research.
The two-day ICIM saw the editor in chief of Palestinian News & Info Agency WAFA, Jamil Dababat, highlight the plight of members of the Palestinian press detained in Israeli prisons.
Dababat claimed that almost all media is dominated by people who have an interest in destroying Muslims and creating a bad image of Islam.
*Anadolu Agency correspondent Ilgin Karlidag contributed to this story from Istanbul.