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BBC and Turan the latest casualties in Azerbaijan's media crackdown.
24 February 2025
The Azerbaijani government has ordered the suspension of BBC News Azerbaijani operation in Baku whle the influential news agency Turan has been forced to drastically scale down its operations in the country. The BBC said in a statement that it had made the "reluctant decision" to close its office in the country after receiving a verbal instruction from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Mehman Aliyev, a prominent journalist and Director of Turan, announced they would be shutting down their offices due to financial problems. Turan was the last independent media outlet that still had offices inside Azerbaijan. Numerous independent journalists have been detained in Azerbaijan while Reporters Without Borders gave the country a highly negative classification on press freedom.