Azerbaijani presidential aide: NYT putting firewalls to alternative views

06 September 2023 10:28

Aide to the President of Azerbaijan, and Head of the Foreign Policy Department of the Presidential Administration Hikmet Hajiyev wrote a letter to the editor of the American newspaper The New York Times.

"Instead of being a fair platform for all voices, I do regret that NYT is putting firewalls and bureaucratic barriers to alternative views," he wrote on X, Caliber.Az reports.

"X [former Twitter] provides alternative even more powerful free and open platform against the information monopoly of some western media outlets which are engaged in Soviet style propaganda against my country. While checking all of these articles, including the one NYT, you get the impression that all they have been written in the same government studio or PR company financed by the armenian lobby and government," Hajiyev said as he attached the letter to his post.

The letter reads:

"Nicholas Kristof makes an important point (NYTimes, 2nd September). The first step to resolving the standoff in Karabakh between Azerbaijan and Armenia is to open additional land routes into the territory to transport supplies. The shortest route is via Azerbaijan itself, not least because that is the country of which Karabakh is part.

That is not the truth that militant Armenian separatists and their diaspora supporters want the world to hear. They want Karabakh to remain linked only and solely to Armenia through a single, monoethnic land route. This should not be acceptable to the international community any more than it is acceptable to Azerbaijan.

During the 30 years Armenia occupied one quarter of Azerbaijan's sovereign territory Karabakh was a grey zone. Ethnically cleansed of close to one million Azerbaijanis, the remaining Karabakh Armenian population was suckled via a single land route to Armenia, while the majority occupied territory was a land-mined buffer around them. Such a grey zone would not be tolerable to Armenia if it was in their country. So why should it be acceptable to Azerbaijan when it is in ours?"

My Open Letter to @nytimesworld @nytimes
Instead of being a fair platform for all voices, I do regret that NYT is putting firewalls and bureaucratic barriers to alternative views.

X [former Twitter] provides alternative even more powerful free and open platform against the… pic.twitter.com/t0iGd0yuV5
— Hikmet Hajiyev (@HikmetHajiyev) September 6, 2023