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Turkey and Azerbaijan cannot vote for one another in semifinal of Eurovision-2008

14 May 2008 13:13 (UTC +04:00)

Music coordinator of Public Television and Radio Broadcasting Company, Eurovisionâ€™s representative on Azerbaijan Leyla Aliyeva told APA that along with Azerbaijan 19 countries would perform in the semifinal of the contest on May 20.
â€œIf we reach the final, we will be able to vote for the representatives of 24 countries. Code number of each country will be announced on the day of contest. This will be SMS number for Azerbaijani operators. Voting will last 15 minutes. The results of the voting will be sent to European Broadcasting Union. They will review the results, send them to us and then the points will be announced on behalf of the countryâ€, she said.
Leyla Aliyeva said that nobody would announce the results of the voting on behalf of the country like in the previous years.
â€œThe Organizing Committee will announce first ten countries reaching the final. If we reach the final, one person will announce on behalf of the country what countries we have voted forâ€, she said.
Leyla Aliyeva also touched on the peculiarities of this yearâ€™s contest.
â€œThis yearâ€™s contest has two semifinals. The list of the countries participating in each semifinal has been deliberately compiled so that the countriesâ€™ positions are not reflected during the voting. The Organizing Committee tried to prevent voting of the countries from the geopolitical position. For example, Turkish citizens cannot vote for Azerbaijani representative, and Azerbaijani citizens for the representative of Turkey. The same rule is applied to the countries of which friendly relations are obvious. This attempt aimed at releasing the song contest from political positions. But these rules will lose force in the final, all participating countries will vote for the finalistsâ€, she said.
Leyla Aliyeva also said that the cost of one SMS had not been fixed yet and this price would be known a day before the contest.