Ali Karimli

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Əli Kərimli born Əli Əmirhüseyn oğlu Kərimov (born April 28, 1965 in the Saatli region of Eastern Azerbaijan) is an Azeri politician and the head of the reformist wing of the Azerbaijan Popular Front Party (APFP). This name is often spelled Ali Karimli. It can be the result of the mere replacement of "ə" by "a", which happens in some sources due to technical limitations, or as the result of the transliteration of the name in Russian (Али Каримли) and its retranslitteration in English, most of the sources used are Russian or written in Russian.

After military service in the Soviet army in 1985, Əli Kərimov studied law at the Baku State University. During his studies he established and headed the Yurd (Homeland) movement which supported democratic reform. In November 1988, Yurd, supported by intellectuals, organized student meetings in Baku to protest the communist regime. Special units of the security services were used to oppress the demonstrations. Like other Azerbaijani nationalists, Kərimov changed his name to erase the russian ending -ov and became Əli Kərimli.

In July 1989 Kǝrimli led Yurd into the newly created Popular Front of Azerbaijan (PFA) movement. He headed a party cell at his university and participated in the creation of the movement's charter.

In 1991, after receiving his diploma, he started work as a teacher in the Baku State University Law Department. At the same time, Kǝrimli worked as a correspondent with the independent Azadlıq (Freedom) newspaper.

In January 1992, he was elected as the deputy chairman of the PFA Supreme Council. In April 1993, the head of the PFA and the President of Azerbaijan Əbülfəz Elçibəy (Azerbaijan's first elected President after the breakup of the Soviet Union) appointed Kərimli as Secretary of State.

After the coup d'etat in the summer of 1993 which led to Heydər Əliyev assuming power, Kərimli submitted his resignation. In 1995, the PFA was renamed as the Azerbaijan Popular Front Party (APFP), with Elçibəy remaining as its chairman. From 1995 till 2000 Kǝrimli was Elçibəy's first assistant. In the parliamentary elections of 1995 and 2000, he was also elected as a member of parliament. In 2000, after Elçibəy's death, the APFP broke up into "conservative" and "reformist" wings. Kərimli became the head of the "reformists", which was mostly made up of former activists of the Yurd.

Since 2003, Kǝrimli has been calling for the creation of a bloc of opposition parties. In spring 2005, under Kǝrimli's initiative, the Freedom (Azadıq) bloc of three parties was created, comprising the APFP-reformists, the Equality Party (Müsavat) and the Democratic party.

As another attempt against the opposition he did not get an international passport making Ali Kǝrimli one of the few opposition leaders of this world without a valid international passport.