ANKARA

Anadolu Agency is set to launch its Persian wire service and open an office in Tehran on Tuesday as part of its centennial vision to rank among the world's five most influential news agencies by 2020.

The inclusion of the new service, which has been running in beta, will bring the agency's broadcasting languages to nine, including Turkish, English, Arabic, Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian (BCS), Russian, Kurdish, French and Albanian.

The Tehran-based Persian service has developed its technical infrastructure in order to supply news stories to media outlets in Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan. It will widely report on developments in politics, economy, sports, tourism, life, culture and arts all over the world.

Anadolu Agency’s Persian service will be fully available to its subscriber media outlets on the Agency’s HAS interface while some of the service's news stories, photographs and videos will be available to the public on the AA website, at www.aa.com.tr/fa, on Facebook (www.facebook.com/anadoluagencypersian) and also on Twitter (@aa_persian). 

A number of representatives from Iran's major media outlets, as well as Turkish and Iranian bureaucrats are expected to attend the official opening ceremony of the Tehran office.

A reception party will be held simultaneously at the Istanbul Persian Desk with the attendance of AA Deputy Director General Mustafa Ozkaya and AA Editor-in-Chief and Deputy Director General Metin Mutanoglu.

With its principles of being “reliable, impartial, ethical and fast”, Anadolu Agency aims to bring a breath of fresh air to the Persian media landscape.

It is among the agency’s goals to broadcast news in 11 languages by 2020 -- its centennial anniversary.