Azerbaijani Journalists Visiting Yerevan and Shushi Had More Freedom to Move Around Than Our Journalists in Azerbaijan

The reciprocal visits of Armenian and Azerbaijani journalists are a result of the agreement reached in March this year between the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan regarding humanitarian ties. Edgar Elbakyan, a commentator from Artsakh Public Television, recently returned from Azerbaijan and shared this viewpoint during the "#OraKhnndir" program of ArmNews.

“Baku is a large, rich, and well-maintained city. Guba was somewhat comparable to our towns—slightly larger than Stepanavan. Ganja is comparable to our Gyumri, but it is a larger and richer city. We also saw Azerbaijani villages along the roads,” he stated.

According to Elbakyan, as in other post-Soviet countries, including Armenia, a significant portion of investments flow into the capital, leaving the regions underdeveloped. “The near 20 rural suburbs around Baku resemble backwaters. Azerbaijanis call them 'Baku villages.' Some backwaters also exist in central Baku,” he added.

Elbakyan asserted that Azerbaijani journalists visiting Yerevan and Shushi had much more freedom to move around those cities than they did in Azerbaijan. Moreover, he noted that Azerbaijani journalists likely coordinate every word of their thematic publications with the authorities: “All our interlocutors in Azerbaijan were filtered, special individuals. They had a task to show that coexistence between our peoples is possible. Many of the people we happened to meet did not even know who we were, and our guides asked us not to speak Armenian among ourselves.”

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