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To relieve any pent up tension?
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well, actually, yes.
When you rotate the engine clockwise with a breaker bar, as the timing belt turns the cam, you'll notice that the lower sprocket is "pulling" on the long side of the cam belt. Well, the long side is the side you measure tension on. If that side of the belt has been pulled tight, by the action of turning over the engine, the tension reading would be artifically higher, inflated by whatever "pent up tension" is in the belt, due to the manual rotation of the engine.
By turning it counterclockwise "anticlockwise", you make the other side of the belt the "tight side", and the side you're meauring is now the "slack side" That's what the factory tension specs are based on, measurements on the slack side.