In the article “We Quit Working for Erdogan’s Propaganda Mouthpiece” published on the UK site of Vice international magazine on Tuesday, journalists Kate O’Sullivan and Laura Benitez said, “We joined the agency in January, supposedly to edit English-language news, but quickly found ourselves becoming English-language spin doctors.”

The two applied for the job at Anadolu after seeing an ad in the Guardian daily.

“The AA’s editorial line on domestic politics — and Syria — was so intently pro-government that we might as well have been writing press releases,” it was stated in the article.

O’Sullivan and Benitez also criticized Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arınç for downplaying the number of imprisoned journalists in Turkey at an event at London’s Chatham House. The two journalists later had the opportunity to visit London on business and resigned as soon as they arrived in the UK.

The journalists said the Anadolu Agency was once a point of national pride, but today “it’s at the end of one of the many sets of strings in the ruling [Justice and Development Party] AK Party’s puppet parade.” They said most of Turkey’s TV stations are heavily influenced by the state and the “few opposition channels can expect to have their licenses revoked at any time or be banned from broadcasting key events, such as live election footage or anything that might detract from how fantastic the government are.”

“Much of Turkey’s English-language news came via Today’s Zaman, the largest English-language newspaper in Turkey,” the article said. “Written in good, accessible English, and featuring Western humour and Istanbul-minded opinions, Today’s Zaman provided international eyes with a window into Turkey’s domestic affairs,” it added.

Anadolu Agency Director General Kemal Öztürk, the former press adviser to Erdoğan, is described in the article as a “government cabinet wannabe.” With exclusive access to ministers, the agency could report about domestic affairs as soon as events in the ruling party unfolded, O’Sullivan and Benitez said, adding: “Sources, often the most difficult part of a reporter’s job, were also a breeze: ‘The Foreign Minister told me, so yes it’s true’ — no second source-checks needed. The domestic news editing policy was, essentially: don’t ask questions. Ever.”

According to article, the agency has a more relaxed approach on foreign affairs and correspondents were free to report on events from anywhere they wanted, with a few guidelines to consider.

“A good example of the domestic editorial policy in action came the morning after tapes were leaked in which you can allegedly hear Erdogan and his son discussing how to dispose of a ‘significant’ amount of money. Translators [in Anadolu] went into panic mode to get the real story out to the English-speaking world — that, of course, the tapes had been fabricated.

While the Zaman media group has been working to portray Erdoğan as a “corrupt dictator, hell bent on control and oppression,” the article said, the pro-government media is “just as tirelessly working to paint a picture of a shadowy ‘parallel state’ that is working beneath the surface to twist the minds and thoughts of the vulnerable Turkish public.”

The article quoted Erdoğan as saying “We will get in their cave to catch them,” in reference to the members of the parallel state.

“It is this polarisation of the press that leaves a tightly-squeezed no-man’s land of moderate news sources ripe for accusations of misconduct and terrorism. Patriotism is ingrained in Turkey’s cultural psychology; Turkey has, in many ways, defined itself by its ability to self-protect,” the article said, adding the threat of outside or “foreign” control has been a part of the country’s consciousness since the Republic of Turkey was founded in 1923.