[1] Hürriyet Daily News has generally taken a secular and liberal or centre-left position on most political issues, in contrast to Turkey's other main English-language daily, the Daily Sabah, which is closely aligned with the Justice and Development Party of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

Another conservative competitor, the Gülen movement-run Today's Zaman, was shut down by the government following the 2016 Turkish coup d'état attempt.

[2] In May 2018, the new Erdoğan-aligned owners appointed a new editor and publisher and stated that they intended to run the paper as an independent, non-partisan voice, in implicit contrast to both its previous secular orientation and the Daily Sabah.

[3] The current editor-in-chief is Gökçe Aytulu,[4] who replaced Murat Yetkin in October 2018.

The paper contains domestic, regional, and international news coverage, economic and cultural reporting, as well as regular opinion pieces from leading Turkish journalists and thinkers such as Mehmet Ali Birand,[5] Soner Çağaptay,[5] Nuray Mert,[6] Mustafa Akyol,[7] İlhan Tanir,[5] Burak Bekdil,[5] Sedat Ergin,[8] Semih İdiz,[9] and former editor David Judson.