User:Fedayee/Heydar Aliyev

Heydər Əlirza oğlu Əliyev (often transliterated Heydar Alirza oglu Aliyev; sometimes Heidar Aliev or Geidar Aliev from the Russian Гейдар Алиев, May 10, 1923^[1] – December 12, 2003) served as president of Azerbaijan for the New Azerbaijan Party from June 1993 to October 2003, when his son İlham Əliyev succeeded him. Əliyev dominated the political life of Azerbaijan for over 30 years, but left his oil-rich country with a problematic legacy of gross corruption. He was married to Zərifə Əziz qızı Əliyeva, who died in 1985, and was survived by his son and daughter.

Career in the Soviet era

Early life

Aliyev obscured much of his early life, and details remain uncertain. He claimed to have been born into a working-class family in the Nakhchivan ASSR (today the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic) of the Azerbaijan SSR, though doubt exists over his date of birth. After graduating from Nakhchivan Pedagogical School, he attended the Azerbaijan Industrial Institute (now the Azerbaijan State Oil Academy) where he studied architecture. He also claimed to have studied at the Baku State University, graduating with a degree in history. It seems, however, that he actually attended the Ministry of State Security Academy in Leningrad.

KGB and leader of Azerbaijan SSR

He joined the Azerbaijani Committee of State Security (the NKVD) in 1944. He worked his way up through the ranks, becoming its deputy chairman in 1964 and chairman in 1967. Two years later, in 1969, Leonid Brezhnev's administration appointed Aliyev to the post of First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Azerbaijan Communist Party. In the same year, he was also appointed head of the KGB, the USSR's secret service organization, in Azerbaijan. As head of the KGB's branch in Azerbaijan, he ran an anti-corruption campaign masked to purge his opponents.^[2][3][4] Following the purge, Aliyev soon became the undisputed leader of Azerbaijan. During this time, Heydar Aliyev was enriched and venerated by developping prominent ties with the Azeri mafia. Aliyev, with the help of the Azeri mafia, earned the profits from the Capsian Sea caviar, Sumgait oil, fruits and vegetables, cotton and customs and transport industies of Azerbaijan.^[2][3] In order to remain as undisputed leader of Azerbaijan, Heydar Aliyev paid bribes to Brezhnev in the form of gifts such as a "Sun-king" diamond ring that was worth up to 226,000 roubles.^[2][3][4] When two Moscow prosecutors investigated the Azeri mafia, one was tried and expelled from the Communist party and the other was convicted and shot.^[2] He also became a candidate (non-voting) member of the Soviet Politburo in 1976. He occupied this position until December 1982 when Yuri Andropov promoted him to the post of first Deputy Prime Minister of the Soviet Union. The promotion came after a sum of 4 million roubles in bribes, at the cost of the Azeri mafia.^[2] Aliyev thus became the first Turkic and Muslim full member of the Politburo. He took up responsibility for transport and for social services.

His star waned following the appointment in 1985 of Mikhail Gorbachev as Soviet leader. His political views became a liability in the era of perestroika. Despite the persecutions of all his relatives in Azerbaijan, Gamboi Mamedov investigated Aliyev's corruption and ties with the mafia. This led to the mass suicide of a number of Azeri mafia members, as well as "mysterious" deaths of a number of Aliyev's lieutenants.^[2] His fall from grace became public when the state newspaper Pravda attacked him for corruption, with critics labeling him "one of the great Communist dinosaurs." In October 1987, Gorbachev mounted a clear-out of the Brezhnevite old guard and forced Aliyev to resign from the Politburo and as head of the Azerbaijan Communist Party "for reasons of health".

Fall and re-invention

Aliyev returned to his native Nakhchivan in 1990. He re-invented himself as a moderate nationalist, resigning from the Communist Party in ostensible protest against the violent Soviet suppression of demonstrations in Baku in January 1990. He was subsequently elected as a deputy in the Azerbaijani legislature and in 1991 gained the appointment of Chairman of the Supreme Majlis Council of the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic. Azerbaijan declared its independence from the Soviet Union on August 30, 1991, though it did not receive formal recognition of its new status until the USSR dissolved in December of that year.

The period immediately after the declaration of independence proved a troubled one for Azerbaijan, which became locked in a bloody conflict with Armenia over the Armenian-populated enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh. The Azerbaijani president, Abülfaz Elçibay, turned in 1992 to Aliyev to bolster a weak and ineffective government, appointing him to the post of Deputy Chairman of the Supreme Council of Azerbaijan. Susequently, many members of the Azeri mafia promplty became Azeri nationalists.^[2]

By 1993, Azerbaijan had descended into chaos and seemed on the verge of a civil war, following disastrous military defeats inflicted by the Armenians. Elçibəy had to flee the capital in June following an attempted coup d'état. Aliyev became acting president and, as part of a deal with the coup leaders, gained appointment as the Chairman of the Supreme Council of Azerbaijan on June 15. The National Assembly elected him as President nine days later.

President of Azerbaijan

Over the course of the subsequent decade, Əliyev ruled his country with a firm hand, encouraging foreign investment while discouraging political dissent. He twice ran and won the presidency of Azerbaijan in national elections (held in the October of 1993 and the October of 1998), but international observers regarded neither election as free nor fair.

Əliyev had considerable success at attracting multinational companies to invest heavily in Azerbaijan's oil industry, which controlled large oil and gas reserves under the Caspian Sea but had suffered poor management in Soviet times. In 1997 President Əliyev signed a huge contract with the international oil consortium Azerbaijan International Operating Company (AIOC). He also acted as one of the driving forces behind the controversial multi-billion dollar project to build the BTC pipeline from Baku to Ceyhan in Turkey, via neighboring Georgia (thus bypassing Russia to the north and Iran, much to those countries' displeasure).

However, mismanagement and corruption flourished under Əliyev's decade of autocratic rule and Azerbaijan gained a reputation as one of the most corrupt countries in the world. Əliyev and his son, İlham both stood accused of personally skimming off huge sums of oil revenue, leading to some describing the country as a kleptocracy.

He also tried but failed to resolve the Nagorno-Karabakh crisis, attempting a military solution in December 1993 that eventually resulted in 16% of Azerbaijani territories under occupation of Armenia and an estimated 30,000 deaths and the displacement of a further 750,000 Azeris. The issue remains unresolved, with Armenian rule continuing in Nagorno-Karabakh and Azerbaijan still hosting several hundred thousand refugees.

In 1995 assassins tried to kill Əliyev in retaliation for his attempts to clean up the Turkish casino influence in Azerbaijan. The authorities never captured the would-be assassins, who presumably included Abdullah Çatlı.

Death and successor

Əliyev's health began to fail in 1999, when he had a major heart bypass operation in the United States at the Cleveland Clinic. He later had prostate surgery and a hernia operation. He suffered a collapse while giving a speech on live television in April 2003. On August 6, Əliyev returned to the United States for treatment for congestive heart failure and kidney problems. He stood down from the presidency at the start of October 2003, but in an extremely controversial move appointed his son İlham as his party's sole presidential candidate. On December 12, 2003, President Heydar Aliyev passed away in the Cleveland Clinic.

İlham Əliyev duly won the presidential election of October 15, 2003 but international observers again criticised the contest as falling well below expected standards. This transfer of power became the first case of top-level dynastic succession in the former Soviet Union. Only two months into İlham Əliyev's presidency, his father's death on December 12 marked the end of an era in Azerbaijani politics.

Honors

Throughout his life, Heydar Aliyev was awarded and decorated with numerous awards. Heydar Aliyev was awarded with the Order of Lenin four times, the order of Red Star once and Hero of the Socialistic Labor twice. On 27 March, 1997 in Kiev, Ukraine, Aliyev was awarded with the supreme order of Ukraine, the "Yaroslav Mudry" order. On 13 April 1999, President Heydar Aliyev was awarded with the supreme order of Turkey. the "Peace Premium of Ataturk" order. On 3 April, 2003, he was elected professor and authorized member of the Academy of Safety of the Russian Federation, and was subsequently given the premium of Y.V.Andropov. On 10 May 2003, he was decorated with the order of Saint Apostle Andrey Pervozvanny, wich is the supreme order of Russia.^[1]

References

See also

• President of Azerbaijan
• Politics of Azerbaijan
• National Assembly of Azerbaijan
• Foreign relations of Azerbaijan
• List of political parties in Azerbaijan

External links

• Official website
• Official biography on Azerbaijan's president's website