48 Facts About Heydar Aliyev

Heydar Alirza oghlu Aliyev was an Azerbaijani politician who served as the third president of Azerbaijan from October 1993 to October 2003.

Heydar Aliyev was said to have run a heavy-handed police state where elections were rigged and dissent was repressed.

Heydar Aliyev was born on 10 May 1923 in the city of Nakhchivan.

Heydar Aliyev's family had moved to Nakhchivan before his birth from the village of Jomardly, located only a few miles from Nakhchivan.

Some sources claim that Heydar Aliyev was actually born 2 years earlier in Jomardly, but that it was later decided that a senior Azerbaijani politician should not have an Armenian place of birth.

Heydar Aliyev's father was from Jomardly and his mother was from Vorotan.

Heydar Aliyev had four brothers: Hasan, Huseyn, Jalal, and Agil, as well as three sisters: Sura, Shafiga and Rafiga.

Heydar Aliyev took Senior Staff Professional Development courses at the Dzerzhinsky Higher School of the KGB in Moscow in 1966.

Heydar Aliyev served at the archive department of the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs of the Nakhchivan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic from 1941 to 1944, before his appointment as head of the general department of the Council of People's Commissars of the Nakhchivan ASSR.

Heydar Aliyev joined the Azerbaijan SSR People's Commissariat for State Security in 1944 and proceeded to become the department head of the State Security Committee of Azerbaijan SSR in 1950, after he graduated from the Senior Staff Training School of the USSR State Security Committee.

Heydar Aliyev rose quickly through the KGB ranks, becoming a Deputy Chairman of the Azerbaijani KGB in 1964 and its chairman in 1967, eventually receiving the rank of major general.

Heydar Aliyev was elected First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Azerbaijan Communist Party at its Plenary Session held on 12 July 1969.

Heydar Aliyev made some progress in the fight against corruption: a number of people were sentenced to prison terms, and in 1975, five factory and collective farm managers were sentenced to death for gross corruption.

Heydar Aliyev became perhaps the most successful republican leader, raising the profile of the underprivileged republic and consistently promoting Azerbaijanis to senior posts.

Heydar Aliyev became a candidate member of the Soviet Politburo in 1976.

Heydar Aliyev held this position until December 1982, when Yuri Andropov promoted him to the office of First Deputy Chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers and made him a full member of the Politburo.

Heydar Aliyev thus attained the highest position ever reached by an Azerbaijani in the Soviet Union.

Heydar Aliyev was dismissed from his position as First Deputy Premier and from the Politburo by Mikhail Gorbachev in 1987, officially on health grounds.

Heydar Aliyev publicly opposed the January 1990 Soviet military crackdown in Baku, which had followed the continuing conflict regarding Nagorno-Karabakh.

Almost immediately after this public appearance, Heydar Aliyev left Moscow for his native Nakhchivan.

Heydar Aliyev was elected the Supreme Soviet of Azerbaijan SSR in Baku in October 1990.

Under the pressure and criticism from groups connected to his nemesis, the leader of Soviet Azerbaijan Ayaz Mutallibov, Heydar Aliyev again returned to Nakhchivan, where he was elected Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of Nakhchivan in 1991.

Heydar Aliyev resigned that same year from the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

Heydar Aliyev was elected as the leader of New Azerbaijan Party at its constituent congress organized in Nakhchivan on 21 November 1992.

In May 1994, Heydar Aliyev agreed to ceasefire agreement to end the hostilities in Nagorno-Karabakh, which largely held until the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War in 2020.

On 3 October 1993, as a result of nationwide voting, Heydar Aliyev was elected President of the Republic of Azerbaijan with 98.8 percent of the vote.

Heydar Aliyev was nominated as a candidate in the 2003 presidential elections, but declined to run in the elections in connection with health problems.

When Heydar Aliyev became chairman of the National Assembly in June 1993, Azerbaijan was suffering from internal division and military collapse, which allowed Armenian forces to capture most of five districts in the southwest of Azerbaijan without meeting significant resistance, leading to the displacement of around 350,000 people.

Heydar Aliyev participated in bilateral talks with the new president of Armenia, Robert Kocharyan, in spring 1999 and again in January 2001.

Heydar Aliyev assembled the Constitutional Commission in June 1995 to create a constitution to replace the 1978 Azerbaijan SSR Constitution.

Heydar Aliyev suggested amendments to the Constitution of Azerbaijan in June 2002.

Heydar Aliyev requested the elimination of the death penalty on 3 February 1998.

Heydar Aliyev issued a decree on "Measures for Ensuring Human and Civil Rights and Freedoms" on 22 February 1998.

Elmira Suleymanova was appointed the Commissioner for Human Rights among 3 nominees requested by President Heydar Aliyev, as recorded in Decision No 362 of the Milli Majlis on 2 July 2002.

Heydar Aliyev attended the 49th session of the UN General Assembly in 1994 and the special session of UN GA dedicated to 50th anniversary of United Nations in October 1995.

Heydar Aliyev received former Secretary General of UN Boutros Boutros-Ghali in October 1994 in Baku.

Heydar Aliyev met with Secretary General Kofi Annan during his trip to the US in 1997 July.

Heydar Aliyev addressed the Millennium Summit of UN held in September 2000, where he talked about the Armenian invasion of Nagorno-Karabakh and adjacent regions, and mentioned UN resolutions 822,853,874,884, which demanded unconditional withdrawal of the Armenian armed forces from the occupied Azerbaijani territories.

Heydar Aliyev approved the PfP Presentation Document on 19 April 1996.

Heydar Aliyev paid his first official trip to Russia as a President of the Republic of Azerbaijan in July 1997 with the invitation of Russian President Boris Yeltsin.

Heydar Aliyev paid his first official visit to the US and met with President Bill Clinton on 1 August 1997.

Heydar Aliyev's health began to fail in 1999 when he had a major heart bypass operation in the United States at the Cleveland Clinic.

Heydar Aliyev later had prostate surgery and a hernia operation.

Heydar Aliyev collapsed while giving a speech on live television in April 2003.

Heydar Aliyev stood down from the presidency at the start of October 2003 and appointed his son Ilham as his party's sole presidential candidate.

On 12 December 2003, President Heydar Aliyev died at the Cleveland Clinic.

Heydar Aliyev was given a large state funeral and buried at the Alley of Honor cemetery in Baku.

On 27 March 1997 in Kyiv, Ukraine, Heydar Aliyev received Ukraine's highest award, the Yaroslav Mudry Order, and on 13 April 1999, Turkey's highest honour, the Ataturk International Peace Prize.