site.btaBTA, Anadolu Agency Sign Agreement on News Exchange

The Bulgarian News Agency (BTA) and Türkiye's Anadolu Agency will exchange daily one news report with a photo, which the other agency will translate and publish with free access on its website, under an agreement to this effect the two news agencies signed in Istanbul on Thursday. The agreement was signed by the directors general of BTA and of the Anadolu Agency, Kiril Valchev and Serdar Karagoz, respectively, during a forum on the role of the media in environmental protection organized by the Turkish news agency. The forum was attended by Turkish Vice President Fuat Oktay.

Under the agreement, the two agencies will provide free and full access to the other news agency's news wire, as well as rights to publish photos and videos of the other agency. Also, joint trainings and exchange of visits between editors, reporters, picture editors and technical experts will take place. 

"In 2022 we mark the 50th anniversary since the signing of the first agreement between BTA and the Anadolu Agency as the first such document was signed back in 1972. This means that the relations between our two news agencies are older than the two of us, as I was born in 1973 and you in 1981. Now our news agencies build on the relations from the last agreement between them, from 2016," Valchev said, addressing his Turkish counterpart. 

Karagoz for his part said that the document regulates copyright in the use of the information materials of the two news agencies. 

During the forum, Valchev conferred with Turkish First Lady Emine Erdogan. Mrs Erdogan congratulated the two agencies about the agreement and noted the good neighbourly relations between Bulgaria and Türkiye. 

BTA plans to open correspondents bureaus in all of Bulgaria's neighbours. The news agency already has a press club in Skopje, the Republic of North Macedonia. A BTA press club is to open in Bucharest on October 28. BTA plans to open a press club in Ankara at the start of 2023. The concrete steps for this were discussed in a meeting in Istanbul on Thursday between Valchev and Bulgarian Ambassador in Türkiye Angel Cholakov.