'' Hawar News Agency'' (sometimes abbreviated ''ANHA'') (; ) is a

news agency A news agency is an organization that gathers news reports and sells them to subscribing news organizations, such as newspapers, magazines and All-news radio, radio and News broadcasting, television Broadcasting, broadcasters. A news agency ma ...

. The site started as an Arabic-only news service. Hawar News is linked to the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) and its armed forces the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

Ownership, identity and reliability

The ownership of the Hawar News Agency is unpublished. The website's domain name was first registered in August 2012. The site's ''About'' page says just ''"ANHA"''. Pro- Syrian opposition source Verify-sy claims Hawar News is affiliated with the Democratic Union Party (PYD).

Attacks on staff

A number of its journalists have been killed in the Syrian civil war. In 2022, Issam Abdullah and others, including worker Mohammed Jarada, were allegedly targeted during Turkish airstrikes in northern Syria. Abdullah was killed and Jarada injured. The Committee to Protect Journalists called for Turkish authorities to swiftly investigate the events.

Attack on Cîhan Bilgin and Nazim Daştan

Cîhan Bilgin and Nazim Daştan were killed by a Turkish airstrike in December 2024 whilst working as freelancers for ANHA. The attack was condemned by the Dicle Firat Journalists’ Union and the Press Workers Union of Turkey. In later protests on the issue, a number of their members were detained by Turkish police. Turkish journalists and the leaders of the Istanbul Bar Association have subsequently faced criminal charges over their reporting of the airstrike. Consequently the Turkish Journalists Union has called on the government to abandon state policies hostile to journalists. The National Union of Journalists and International Federation of Journalists have both condemned the attack on Bilgin and Daştan and called for the Syrian transitional government to "carry out an independent investigation into these murders, as well as to identify and convict the perpetrators of these crimes".

Blocking and interference

The site has been repeatedly hacked in 2018, 2019, and 2022. The Turkish telecommunications regulator blocked access to several news agencies in July 2015. The block followed the end of the Kurdish Turkish peace process and was described as a ''counter-terrorism'' action. Other Kurdish language or left-wing news sites based within and outside

Turkey Turkey, officially the Republic of Türkiye, is a country mainly located in Anatolia in West Asia, with a relatively small part called East Thrace in Southeast Europe. It borders the Black Sea to the north; Georgia (country), Georgia, Armen ...

that were banned at the same time as Hawar News included Rudaw, Dicle News Agency, and Özgür Gündem.

References

{{Authority control Arab news agencies Internet properties established in 2012 Arabic-language websites 2012 establishments in Syria News agencies based in Syria Kurdish-language mass media Kurdish-language websites