As Azerbaijan marked the first anniversary of the Second Karabakh War, a lot of ink has been spilled about how world-renowned Turkish-made drones helped secure a victory for Baku, as it contributed to putting an end to the decades-long Armenian occupation of the Nagorno-Karabakh region.

However, rarely, if ever, mentioned is the role played by Turkish media that mobilized to help counter pro-Armenian propaganda in the West by providing a platform for Azerbaijanis to shed light on the truth of what was really taking place in Karabakh.

Since the outbreak of the Karabakh War in September 2020, Turkey-based news media outlets such as Yeni Şafak and the state-owned Anadolu Agency have commissioned countless videos and articles to help give an unbiased take on the unfolding conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh.

Thanks to their large English-speaking following, websites such as Yeni Şafak were able to give a balanced account of the bigger picture as the war ground on. Content diffused on their social media channels came as a breath of fresh air in an English-speaking media landscape dominated by a misleading pro-Armenian narrative that tried at every turn to fabricate lies and hide the atrocities being committed in Karabakh.

After numerous smear campaigns and misinformation, as we’ve seen in the Sheikh Jarrah debacle in Palestine, it’s become quite clear that the war was also being fought to win the hearts and minds of the youths on social media who are now more eager than ever to champion causes they deem to be silenced by WASP media outlets.

As Azerbaijan clinched victory on Nov.8 after a 44-day war, we’re once again reminded of the power of new-age tools in a world of social media, because as the rules of engagement changed on the ground with the rise of modern drones, so did the battleground for war reporting.