One of the oldest newspapers in Azerbaijan stops working due to lack of funds

Baku/19.12.22/Turan: One of the oldest newspapers in Azerbaijan, "Ipekchi" has to  stop publishing. As the last editor-in-chief of the newspaper published in the city of Sheki, Aydin Mammadov, told Turan, The termination of the editorial office takes place on the eve of the 90th anniversary of the newspaper due to the  absense of funds for the newspaper to pay for the Internet host, domain and other expenses for the maintenance of the newspaper, Aydin Mammadov, the last editor-in-chief of the newspaper published in the city of Sheki,  told Turan . The last payment deadline is December 24, 2022.

"The Media Development Agency does not provide us with even 100 manats of assistance, they do not have the right to do so. Instead, we are required to support three employees with a salary of at least 500 manats. For 10 years of this Agency and its predecessor, they were only engaged in putting forward demands for the payment of taxes , and such people as Ata Abdullayev and Vugar Safarli received state assistance," editor-in-chief A. Mammadov told Turan.

"In Azerbaijan, the press does not receive state support. State aid is given to media owned by oligarchs," Mammadov wrote in a recent editorial. He raised questions on this issue with the Prosecutor General's Office, but in four months of correspondence with this department he did not receive a satisfactory answer.

The newspaper "Ipekchi" was created on March 13, 1933 as a publication of the Silk Factory in the city of Sheki (then Nukha). In 2012, the Silk Factory liquidated the staff of the editor-in-chief of the newspaper, but A. Mammadov continued to publish the newspaper in paper format, and in 2018 he switched only to the Internet format. On December 14, 1993, on its 60th anniversary, President Heydar Aliyev congratulated the Ipeksi newspaper in writing.

A. Abdullayev, who posed as an investigative reporter, and the former executive director of the abolished State Support Fund for Media Development under the President of Azerbaijan, Vuqara Safarli, were convicted of criminal offenses.