TV channel closed in Azerbaijan - jamnews
Late on July 18, the National TV and Radio Council (NTRC) of Azerbaijan temporarily suspended the broadcast of the local ANS TV channel in view of the appeal of the General Prosecutor’s Office. It turned out on July 19 that the TV channel suspended operation for one month, Jamnews reports. As meydan.tv has reported, the next day the state agency officials conducted an inspection in the building, while the TV channel staff were waiting for the news outside. The employees assume that Vahid Mustafayev and Mirshahin Agayev, the heads of the TV channel, are now in the Prosecutor’s Office. As the NTRC pointed out in its statement, “having expressed solidarity with the Turkish people, the Azerbaijani community and the civil society institutes strongly condemned an attempt to overthrow the legally elected government. However, ANS TV channel took a position contradicting the spirit of brotherhood and strategic partnership between Azerbaijan and Turkey, carrying out a propaganda against the Turkish state and the government, expressing support to Fethullah Gülen, an organizer of the coup in Turkey.” The Council believes, ANS TV reports and interviews portrayed the developments in Turkey ‘as the authorities’ staged show,’ aiming at discrediting the measures taken by the Turkish government. The TV channel’s reporter interviewed Fethullah Gülen (a religious and public figure), a suspected in attempted coup, in the USA. The TV channel was closed after this interview had been announced. The Council admits, the decision was made on the Turkish Embassy’s request: “The Turkish leadership, through its Embassy in Azerbaijan, expressed deep concern over that fact and requested to take adequate measures.” “Erdogan (the President of Turkey) controls 70% of the TV broadcasting and I have written that this information hegemony may play against the ruling party at any moment and it has already played,” says Natiq Jafarli, a politician and economist, a member of the ReAL movement’s board. “Not to mention that closure of the TV channel, in itself, is a very bad situation. It’s another example of vulnerability of the state that is dependent on many factors.” “This ANS is like a bride, who has been disliked: sometimes she is returned to the paternal home and then taken back again,” Nijat Melikov, a journalist, wrote on his Facebook page. ANS TV channel was subjected to the government’s pressure on a number of occasions. The channel was fined on the NTRC’s demand. This agency also insisted on closing some of the programs, expressing indignation over the anchors’ vocabulary. In November, 2006, the TV channel was deprived its license and ceased broadcasting until the early 2007. Having returned back, it started demonstrating greater loyalty than before. “The TV channel greatly changed for worse during those years,” said Magerram Zeynalov, a journalist. “Earlier, when there were problems somewhere, the trees were cut down and the houses were demolished, ANS would appear and become ‘the nation’s voice’. It’s no longer so. Nevertheless, even now, when I go somewhere, people would ask: ‘Are you from ANS’?
