The photos selected in AA's contest are the ones Erdoğan liked

Anadolu Agency (AA) photojournalists' 112 photos depicting events that left their mark on 2025 competed in the "Frames of the Year" voting, in which President Erdoğan also participated, casting his votes for photos in four categories:

"News: Conqueror of the Skies (Mustafa Hatipoğlu), Sports: Alperen (Esra Bilgin), Gaza: Hunger (Ali Jadallah), Natural life and environment: Dirty Wings (Şebnem Coşkun)"

It was not explained why President Erdoğan voted in only four of the six categories in the competition, nor why he did not vote in the "Portrait" and "Daily Life" categories.

However, as a result of the voting, the photos Erdoğan chose—"Conqueror of the Skies," "Alperen," and "Hunger"—all came in first place. Ali Jadallah's "Hunger" photo had already received the Presidential Culture and Arts Grand Award; Erdoğan had displayed this photo while speaking at the podium at the UN General Assembly.

Of the four frames Erdoğan liked, only "Dirty Wings" failed to place; instead, the photo "On the First Attempt" (Berkay Çetin) was selected as the winner.

In short, the harmony between the winning photos in the contest and the photos chosen by Erdoğan is remarkable! The majority of the 2 million 257 thousand 708 people who voted found three of the four photos chosen by Erdoğan worthy of an award! Furthermore, Anadolu Agency (AA) Chairman of the Board and Director General Serdar Karagöz did not disclose the distribution of the millions of votes cast among the photos when announcing the results; he merely stated the winners.

Another noteworthy aspect of AA's photo contest is that it was organized this year with the sponsorship of Lifebox (Turkcell), AJet, and ROKETSAN. AA is an organization with public asset status, yet it still felt the need to receive sponsorship from public institutions. For some reason...