Azernews.Az

Turkish newspaper Hurriyet has published a retraction of libelous articles citing the head of an Azerbaijani state historical preserve.

A Turkish court has ruled in favor of Mikayil Jabbarov, who heads the Old City State Historical Architectural Preserve Administration at the Cabinet of Ministers, after he initiated legal action in Turkey demanding a court ruling against Hurriyet and the author of the above-mentioned articles.

"After Hurriyet refused to publish my letter, I had no choice other than to take the matter to court," Jabbarov said in an interview with Azerbaijan's Day.az news portal.

In accordance with the court decision, the newspaper published on journalist Fatih Chekirge's page a refutation of the libelous articles headlined as "Sen menim kim oldugumu bilir misen?" [Do you know who I am?] and "Ishte o mühim gishi" [In fact, he is a VIP], which were posted on August 13-14.

Jabbarov confirmed that on October 5 the Istanbul Criminal Court upheld his plea for imposing an obligation on the newspaper to publish a refutation. The newspaper was ordered to publish retractions twice on Fatih Cekirge's page.

However, Cekirge voiced his disagreement with the court decision in comments to the published retraction, referring to Turkish Airlines' not presenting to the court an internal report on the incident on board a flight, which the articles dealt with.

But Day.Az has learned that Turkish Airlines sent on October 16 a letter extending an apology to Mr. Huseynov, who was indeed involved in the mentioned incident. The airline's letter confirmed Jabbarov's statement, who urged the incident on board involved one of the flight passengers.

The airline expressed regret over the situation that led to the complaint in its letter to Mr. Huseynov.

"We have received your message dated on August 18, 2012. First of all, we would like to apologize for our late response. "Customer Satisfaction" is on the top of the list of our priorities at Turkish Airlines. Foremost, we would like to let you know that all Turkish Airlines personnel, particularly our cabin crew, routinely attend professional training courses to improve their behavioral and communication skills, body language, diction and in-flight safety techniques," the letter of Customer Relations Department said.

"We would like to inform you that cabin crew have no authorization to upgrade the passenger to Business class section. According to information taken by related department, on mentioned flight, your relatives changed their seats on Business class section. Thus, the staff had to explain you about the rules of upgrading to business class. However, the related department has been reminded that the staff of department has to present more liable approach while explaining the rules," the letter noted.