About Kanal 13

Kanal 13

Kanal 13 is an independent Azerbaijani internet television channel, broadcasting online and via YouTube, founded in 2008 by the brothers Aziz and Anar Orujov. It covers domestic and foreign political issues, social and economic problems, citizens' grievances and human rights violations, and it is one of the best-known of the independent Azerbaijani outlets that have been driven from normal operation inside the country by prosecution. Its Baku director, Aziz Orujov, has been imprisoned twice — in 2017 and again from November 2023 — in cases that Amnesty International, the Committee to Protect Journalists and Human Rights Watch describe as retaliation for his journalism, and the channel's YouTube access was blocked inside Azerbaijan by court order in December 2023. Kanal 13 now operates substantially from exile, with Anar Orujov based in Germany.

Amnesty International names Kanal 13 among the independent outlets — with Abzas Media, Meydan TV and Toplum TV — targeted in the crackdown on Azerbaijani media workers that ran from 2023 to 2025. That company defines the channel's significance: it is not a large broadcaster, but it is one of the small number of Azerbaijani outlets that continued to report critically on the authorities, and paid for it.

Founding and development

Kanal 13 was founded in 2008 by Aziz Orujov together with his brother Anar. Aziz Orujov, born on 3 January 1984 in Barda District, studied journalism at Baku State University from 2001 to 2005 and worked for newspapers including Sharg, Millet and Ayna before co-founding the channel and heading its Baku office. An internet television channel was a forward-looking form in 2008 Azerbaijan: publishing video online and later on YouTube freed the outlet from the broadcast licensing system through which the state controls terrestrial and cable television, and allowed it to reach viewers directly.

The channel built its output around the material that Azerbaijan's state and pro-government television does not carry: interviews and reports on social and economic grievances, citizens' complaints against government bodies, criticism of law enforcement, the problems of war veterans, and human rights violations. Anar Orujov, speaking after his brother's 2023 arrest, summarised the editorial stance as a refusal to become a mouthpiece of the authorities, while also noting that the channel had supported Azerbaijan's position on territorial integrity during the 44-day war of 2020 and the September 2023 operation — a reminder that Kanal 13's independence has been journalistic rather than aligned with any foreign or opposition camp.

Coverage and format

Kanal 13 is a video-first outlet. Its programmes are published online, principally on YouTube, and consist of news reports, interviews, talk formats and citizen-focused segments in Azerbaijani. The channel's documented subject matter spans domestic and foreign politics, social and economic issues and human rights. In the ecosystem of Azerbaijani independent media, internet television of this kind performed a function that text outlets could not: it let complainants, activists, lawyers and ordinary citizens speak on camera, in their own voices, to an audience inside the country.

That function explains both the channel's reach and the authorities' attention. Video testimony about an official abuse or a veteran's unpaid benefits is harder to dismiss than an anonymous article, and YouTube distribution took the channel beyond the blocking applied to independent websites, until the courts moved against the channel itself.

The 2017 prosecution of Aziz Orujov

The state's first major case against Kanal 13 came in 2017. Police arrested Aziz Orujov on 2 May 2017, initially for allegedly disobeying a police officer; he was sentenced to 30 days' detention. Hours before that detention expired, the authorities charged him with illegal entrepreneurship and abuse of authority, claiming that the channel had received funding from abroad that was not registered with the Ministry of Justice — a charge pattern that Human Rights Watch notes Azerbaijan has used repeatedly against government critics, journalists and NGO leaders. In June 2017 he was further charged in connection with taxes on donations received by the Caucasus Media Investigations Centre Public Union, which he had founded in 2006. In December 2017 a Grave Crimes Court sentenced him to six years in prison. Amnesty International recognised him as a prisoner of conscience, imprisoned solely for his journalistic work.

On 5 April 2018, the Supreme Court of Azerbaijan dismissed the illegal entrepreneurship charges and released Orujov on a suspended three-year sentence — a rare partial reversal that Human Rights Watch welcomed while noting he should never have been prosecuted. The episode established the pattern that would repeat in 2023: prosecution on non-journalistic charges, international condemnation, and a channel that resumed work on its director's release. In 2021, Orujov's name appeared on a leaked list of individuals potentially targeted with Pegasus spyware, published in the OCCRP-coordinated Pegasus Project reporting.

The 2023 arrest and second imprisonment

On the evening of 27 November 2023, in the opening weeks of the crackdown that began with the arrests of Abzas Media's leadership, Sabail District police arrested Aziz Orujov at his family home in Baku and searched his home, his car and Kanal 13's office, confiscating documents, USB sticks, two laptops, a mobile phone and bank cards, according to his wife Lamiya Orujova's account to the Committee to Protect Journalists. The formal accusation was strikingly unrelated to journalism: that Orujov had built a house without permission on a plot of land he had bought in Baku's Sabail District, under Article 188.2 of the Criminal Code, concerning unauthorised construction. His lawyer, Bahruz Bayramov, replied that the land's unregistered status was shared by around half a million homes in and around Baku and that no one else was jailed for the offence; the charge, he said, was retaliation for journalism. A currency-smuggling accusation was added and later, in December 2024, dropped. Freelance journalist Shamo Eminov, who collaborated with Kanal 13, was also charged in the same period.

On 20 December 2023 a Baku court ordered access to Kanal 13's YouTube channel blocked. On 26 February 2025 Orujov was sentenced to two years in prison on the construction charge. The CPJ continues to advocate for his case, describing the charges as retaliatory; the tabulated record of the 2023–2025 arrests lists his release date as 28 November 2025, at the completion of the two-year sentence. Through this period the channel continued from exile, its Baku operation decapitated for a second time.

Operating from exile

Exile is now the normal condition of Azerbaijani independent journalism, and Kanal 13 exemplifies it. With Anar Orujov in Germany and the Baku director imprisoned, the channel's production moved abroad while its subject remained Azerbaijan: exile outlets of this kind report through correspondents, contributors, video sent from inside the country and interviews conducted remotely, and reach their audience through YouTube and social platforms when their channels are not blocked, and through mirrors and VPN access when they are. The batch record for this profile describes the channel, accurately, as "broadcasting online and via YouTube from exile after pressure inside Azerbaijan".

Exile imposes costs that should not be romanticised: distance from events, dependence on material sent out of the country, staff security concerns, and an audience at home that must circumvent blocks. But it also places the channel beyond the licensing and registration machinery of the Azerbaijani media law. Kanal 13's survival in this form — as it survived its director's first imprisonment — is the practical meaning of its independence.

Place in Azerbaijan's independent media

Kanal 13 belongs to the small company of Azerbaijani outlets that international monitors treat as the country's independent press: Abzas Media, Meydan TV, Toplum TV, Kanal 11 and a handful of others. Freedom House's Freedom on the Net reporting records that between November 2023 and May 2025 the authorities imprisoned 25 journalists, the vast majority from online outlets, on charges international organisations describe as trumped-up; Amnesty's account of the period names Kanal 13 among the outlets targeted. Within that company, Kanal 13's distinction is seniority and format: founded in 2008, it predates most of its peers, and it works in video, where the others work mainly in text and mixed media.

Its history also illustrates the chronology of pressure on Azerbaijani media: the 2017 case against Orujov belonged to an earlier wave that also imprisoned the investigative journalist Khadija Ismayilova in 2014–2016 and ended the broadcast operations of ANS in 2016; the 2023 case belonged to the comprehensive crackdown that followed the 2023 Karabakh operation and preceded the 2024 elections and Baku's hosting of COP29. Reporters Without Borders ranks Azerbaijan near the very bottom of its World Press Freedom Index, at 167th of 180 in recent editions.

Audience and reach

Kanal 13's audience is Azerbaijani-speaking and substantially inside Azerbaijan, reached through YouTube and social distribution; the channel has historically drawn large viewership for its grievance and interview programming, though no independently audited audience figure is available and this profile cites none. The December 2023 court-ordered blocking of its YouTube channel inside Azerbaijan was aimed precisely at that domestic reach, and, as with other blocked Azerbaijani outlets, determined viewers continue to reach exile media through VPNs and alternative links. Its secondary audience is the Azerbaijani diaspora and the international community of journalists, researchers and rights organisations that follow its case as an indicator of Azerbaijani press freedom.

Assessment

Kanal 13 is a significant Azerbaijani media outlet not because of its size but because of its record: an internet television channel founded in 2008 that reported what state television would not, whose director was twice imprisoned on charges the world's press-freedom organisations regard as retaliatory, whose channel was blocked at home, and which continues to publish from exile. Any directory of Azerbaijani online news that omitted it would misdescribe the country's media; any description that omitted its persecution would misdescribe it. It stands, with Abzas Media and Toplum TV, as one of the defining cases of independent journalism in Azerbaijan in the 2020s.