Truth underrated in Turkish politics, says 'Share of Truth' head

Truth is underrated in Turkey and is not the first thing that voters expect from politicians, according to the co-founder of online fact-checking website "Do?ruluk Pay?" (Share of Truth).

"We are trying to establish a counter narrative based on truth ... We want to promote a society that demands truth from politics. We are trying to establish dialogue between politicians and their constituency and make politicians accountable," Ferdi Ferhat Özsoy told the Hürriyet Daily News in an exclusive interview.

Give us a brief overview of your group's work. 

Share of Truth is a project of the Dialogue for Common Future Association. It is a fact-checking website. We fact-check the statements of Turkish politicians, mostly members of parliament.

We have certain criteria when choosing the statements. First it has to be high on the agenda and it has to be a verifiable statement. Also we need to be able to check it on open sources. We can't go to sources that are paid for or not accessible to us.

So does that mean you fact-check statements based on figures or statistics?

Mostly. But there are also other cases, such as when someone claims that "nearly all G-8 counties have presidential systems." We need measurable statements that are quantifiable, but sometimes we also verify statements on historical facts.

But in general 75 percent of the statements we have checked are related to the economy. The rest are usually on security issues, health issues, and also we have been checking refugee issues a lot lately. We are not fact-checking politicians; we are fact-checking statements.

We get the raw data make it accessible and transparent. Anybody could go to a Turkish statistics website. But it is about how you read...