Azerbaijani political expert: Akram Aylisli has already become our Ohran Pamuk

• Monday, February 11, 12:42

Akram Aylisli has already become our Ohran Pamuk, Arif Yunusov, Head of the Department for Conflicts and Migration, peace and Democracy Institute (Baku), said in an interview with ArmInfo, when commenting on persecutions against Azerbaijani writer Akram Aylisli.

To recall, President Ilham Aliyev signed an order to deprive writer Akram Aylisli of the title "People's Writer" and personal pension of the President of the Azerbaijan Republic, overnight. The authorities of Azerbaijan with participation of the TV Channels, parliament and politicians have launched a campaign of harassment against the writer Akram Aylisli for his novel "Stone Dreams." The novel by Aylisli caused a negative reaction, and caused a non-ethical campaign of
pressure on the writer and his family. 

 "I know Aylisli personally, and judging by his words he wrote that novel yet in 90s, but he had been constantly working on it changing it, adding or removing something. He completed the work yet in 2006, but did not publish. He was recently asked from Moscow to submit something for publishing, as they had not published his works for a long time already. So, Akram quickly translated the novel and sent it to Moscow. He admits that he did not wait such a hot response. As a writer he supposed that some people would disagree with him and there may be hot debates, but not beyond the bounds of decency. What has happened in our country was really unexpected for him," Yunusov said.  As regards the talks that Aylisli allegedly claims the Nobel Prize and laurels of Ohran Pamuk, Yunusov called them fiction.  "He wrote what he considered necessary for him. Yet in 90s he talked to me on that topic. So, there was nothing new for me and I was ready to everything we can observe in Azerbaijan now," the Azerbaijani expert said.  Orhan Pamuk is a Turkish novelist, screenwriter, academic and
recipient of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature. He is widely known for his civil position on the Armenian Genocide in Ottoman Turkey, which does not coincide with the official position of the Turkish authorities.