Azeri official accuses private news agency of “misleading public”
Yeni Musavat, Baku
11 Sep 05
Excerpt from Elsad Pasasoy’s report in Azerbaijani newspaper Yeni
Musavat on 11 September headlined “Gallup will respond” and subheaded
“Mehman Aliyev: Those who think that this issue will be hushed up are
badly mistaken”
We reported yesterday that the US Gallup International Association has
exposed the Azerbaijani authorities. Gallup International made a
statement denying reports that they conducted an opinion poll in
Azerbaijan last May, in which 77 per cent of the respondents said they
“trust” [President] Ilham Aliyev.
[Passage omitted: reported details; Chris Stewart, Gallup’s global
brand manager, has said in a statement forwarded to Azerbaijan’s
independent Turan news agency that his organization has not conducted
opinion polls in Azerbaijan]
Surprisingly, Nazim Isayev, deputy head of the public-political
department of the Presidential Executive Staff, is accusing Turan
instead of accusing the lying members of the ruling team. Isayev says
Turan either failed to realize the crux of the issue or released this
information in order to mislead the public.
“The thing is that Turan news agency appealed to Gallup, which is
different from Gallup International. Gallup International conducted an
opinion poll in Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan in April to find out
what the peoples of these countries think about the leaders of some of
the world’s great powers and their own countries. It polled 1,000
people in each country. At that time, this was reported by the US
magazine Washington Profile, Armenia’s Azg and Turkey’s Zaman
newspapers, as well as by the Russian news agency Regnum. Azerbaijan’s
media organizations also reported about this poll,” he said.
Isayev claims that Turan inquired whether such an opinion poll had
been conducted ahead of the election.
“And Gallup was right when it responded that it had not conducted any
such poll,” Isayev said.
Yesterday we contacted Mehman Aliyev, head of Turan news
agency. Mehman bay [mode of address] reiterated that Turan had never
sent any query to Gallup. Aliyev said Gallup had sent a statement to
Turan after some news organizations, including some Russian and
Armenian newspapers and Turkey’s Zaman newspaper, reported about the
poll.
“They simply asked us to publish their statement as an independent
news agency,” Aliyev said.
[Passage omitted: Mehman Aliyev says Gallup is going to take measures
against the Azerbaijani authorities as its reputation was damaged]