Azerbaijan commemorates Heydar Aliyev

Azerbaijan is marking the 13th anniversary of the death of the founder and the architect of the modern and independent state of Azerbaijan, national leader of Azerbaijan people Heydar Aliyev.

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and his family members, as well as parliamentarians, ministers, committee chairs, company heads, public figures have visited Heydar Aliyev's grave in the Alley of Honor.

On this day representatives of government agencies, political parties, nongovernmental organizations, media outlets, as well as the people of Azerbaijan also paid tribute at the memorial of the ex-president of Azerbaijan.

Today numerous events are organized in all regions of Azerbaijan, as well as in the foreign countries.

On that day, representatives of government agencies, political parties, nongovernmental organizations, media outlets, as well as the people of Azerbaijan visit Heydar Aliyev’s grave in the Alley of Honors.

Heydar Aliyev's achievements enabled the young state of Azerbaijan to stand on feet and become an independent country.

Heydar Aliyev's ideas laid the foundation for today's strong, rich and developing Azerbaijan, thanks to him, the republic occupies a worthy place in the world, the Azerbaijani parliament’s vice-speaker, Bahar Muradova, said. She noted that the progress made by Azerbaijan, the preserving of independence and development of statehood are based on the course of state building, created on these ideas and national interests of the country.

The chairman of the International and Interparliamentary Relations Committee of the Azerbaijani Parliament, Samad Seyidov, in turn, drew attention to the fact that the world has begun to study a philosophy left by Heydar Aliyev. The MP pointed out that the difficult period which Azerbaijan survived in the early 1990s, should be thoroughly analyzed in other countries.

President of the Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences (ANAS) Akif Alizadeh said that during the period when Heydar Aliyev headed Azerbaijan, there have been great revolutionary changes and reforms. 

The deputy of the State Duma, deputy head of the Russian-Azerbaijani parliamentary group, Dmitry Savelyev, expressed his condolences to the President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev and Azerbaijani people on the anniversary of the national leader of the country's death.

Politicians, public figures and cultural figures remember Heydar Aliyev as an outstanding statesman and a great man of his era. The Deputy Chairman of the Russian Commission for UNESCO, the former head of North Ossetia, a bearer of Azerbaijan's Order of Friendship, Alexander Dzasokhov, stressed that the achievements and initiatives of Heydar Aliyev still serve for the benefit of Azerbaijan.

The chairman of the Federation Council’s Foreign Affairs committee, Konstantin Kosachev, calls Heydar Aliyev the national treasure of Azerbaijani people and the entire post-Soviet space. "This is a man who adequately and correctly understood interests of his people as the allied relations with the Russian people and other peoples," Konstantin Kosachev explained.

The Chairman of the Executive Committee, Sergey Lebedev, assesses Heydar Aliyev as a unique personality and a unique statesman. "For me as chairman of the CIS Executive Committee, it is important to mention that he was a convinced internationalist. Heydar Aliyev contributed to the preservation of friendly and fraternal relations between the peoples living in Azerbaijan, and in the framework of the Soviet Union in general," Sergei Lebedev said.

According to a political analyst, Candidate of Historical Sciences Oleg Kuznetsov, Heydar Aliyev is the true architect of modern Azerbaijan's state structure. "Heydar Aliyev created a model of the national economy, focused on the diversification of the use of natural resources by attracting foreign capital in the interests of his country, and formed a coherent multi-party political model," Oleg Kuznetsov pointed out.

The PhD, head of the expert council of Baku Network, Elkhan Alasgarov, agreed with Oleg Kuznetsov. "It is difficult to overestimate the role of Heydar Aliyev. This is a man who has made a huge contribution to Azerbaijan's independence: he has suspended the conflict, resolved internal contradictions, developed the concept of an independent foreign policy of Azerbaijan, made very broad steps to normalize the economic situation. Heydar Aliyev was the initiator of the major oil consortiums with foreign countries and companies. He also laid the foundation for our new national army, he went to the front himself. The seasons will change and we will appreciate his role from the new position even more highly," Elkhan Alasgarov said.