Your trusted source

Influential international organization Reporters Without Borders published a grim portrait gallery of 37 politicians, who are freedom predators and censor, imprison, torture or murder journalists. Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev and Turkey's president Rejep Tayyip Erdogan  are among them. It is noted that Aliyev has been predator since taking office in 2003, but especially since 2014. 

The organisation notes that Azerbaijan’s subservient judicial system convicts journalists on absurd, spurious charges that are sometimes very serious, while the security services never rush to investigate physical attacks on journalists and sometimes protect their assailants, even when they have committed appalling crimes. Under President Aliyev, news sites can be legally blocked if they pose a “danger to the state or society.” Censorship was stepped up during the war with neighbouring Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh and the government routinely refuses to give accreditation to foreign journalists.

According to the source, critical journalists are the favorite target of Ilham Aliyev. Among victims of the Azerbaijani dictator are  Zaour Gambarov, an outspoken reporter who covers social and economic problems for the Anews.az website, Afgan Mukhtarli, an investigative reporter who covered corruption and nepotism, the brother-in-law of Turkel Azerturk – a dissident journalist based in the Netherlands and host of a programme for Turan TV.  

"The regime also practices sex-video blackmail. Khadija Ismayilova, a journalist who was investigating the Aliyev family’s involvement in corruption, was threatened with “public humiliation” in 2012 and, when she refused to abandon her journalism, secretly-filmed intimate scenes of her with her boyfriend were widely circulated online," the source said. 

As to Turkish president Rejep Tayyip Erdogan it is noted that Turkey’s president does not like the media, or rather, he likes the media to be submissive and docile and to sing his praises. He persecutes critics with the help of a law under which they can be prosecuted for “insulting the president” and broad terrorism legislation that allows every kind of abuse.