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Azerbaijan looks to Turkey as model for cult of dead leader
By Vincent Boland
FT
June 4 2005 03:00
Between a supermarket and a hardwarestore on a busy street close to
the centre of Baku, a poster high on an advertising hoarding provides
a glimpse of what the emerging hub of the Caspian Sea oil industry
might yet become: a country built in the image of one man.
The poster displays portraits of Heydar Aliyev, Azerbaijan's late
president and, in the words of his son, "founder of an independent
Azeri state", and of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who really did create
the republic of Turkey from the ruins of the Ottoman Empire.
That the supermarket is Turkish-owned is not coincidental. The
juxtaposition of these two men is no accident either. Azerbaijan and
Turkey are bonded by ethnicity, language, religion and culture. Both
countries emerged from empires - Azerbaijan from the Soviet Union,
Turkey from its Ottoman imperial past.
Now, a growing cult of personality around Aliyev bears striking
parallels to, and may be a conscious attempt to emulate, the cult of
Ataturk, "father of the Turks", whose legacy still resonates in his
country three generations after his death in 1938.
In Baku, signs of the emerging cult of Aliyev, who died in 2003,
are everywhere. His portrait glowers from posters at traffic
intersections. The airport, schools and factories are named after
him. His bust is in public buildings.
Last week a vast oil pipeline that is the key to Azerbaijan's
future wealth was solemnly inaugurated as the Heydar Aliyev
Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan Oil Pipeline.
The man guiding this memorialisation of Aliyev is his son, Ilham
Aliyev, Azerbaijan's current president. At the ceremony to open the
pipeline, Aliyev the younger gave an emotional speech in memory of
his father.
"He was the architect, the strategist of Azerbaijan," he told
an audience that included the presidents of Turkey, Georgia and
Kazakhstan.
The old man was not present because "destiny has decided otherwise,
but his ideas are eternal for us".
Azeris are wearily familiar with the cult of personality from their
days as citizens of the Soviet Union. According to some western
observers in Baku, they may also be torn between their Soviet and
Turkish heritage, giving the parallels between the personality cults
of Aliyev and Ataturk added potency.
Some Azeris make the comparison explicit. Samir Sharifov, executive
director of the State Oil Fund in Baku, says that, just as Ataturk
rescued Turkey from occupation and destruction after the first world
war, Aliyev saved Azerbaijan from the same fate after independence from
the Soviet Union and a war with Armenia over the disputed territory
of Nagorno Karabakh. "Heydar Aliyev did for Azerbaijan what Ataturk
did for Turkey," he says.
Is the parallel justified? The two men could hardly be more
different. Ataturk was one of the great figures of the interwar years
in Europe, forcing Turkey to modernise and turn westward. His legacy
today is a democratic Turkey.
Aliyev was an apparatchik, the first non-Russian to head a KGB
operation in a Soviet republic (Azerbaijan), who climbed the Soviet
power apparatus to become a member of the Politburo. He was not the
first president of independent Azerbaijan, but the third, coming
to power in 1993 after internal unrest that he was instrumental in
fomenting. He changed the constitution to allow his son to succeed him.
Aliyev appears to have left Azerbaijan as a hereditary autocracy
that "he rules from beyond the grave", as a western official in Baku
puts it.
Nasib Nassibli, director of the Foundation for Azerbaijani Studies in
Baku, points out that Aliyev could have chosen to model his country
on Turkey's democratic system.
But, from instinct and training, "Heydar Aliyev didn't like the Turkish
version of democracy." What appealed, instead, was the memorialisation
of Ataturk, who has been dead for nearly 70 years but is still alive
in Turkey.
"The people of Azerbaijan need to feel that Heydar Aliyev is still
alive," Prof Nassibli says. "Turkey has given us a very bad example."
By Vincent Boland
FT
June 4 2005 03:00
Between a supermarket and a hardwarestore on a busy street close to
the centre of Baku, a poster high on an advertising hoarding provides
a glimpse of what the emerging hub of the Caspian Sea oil industry
might yet become: a country built in the image of one man.
The poster displays portraits of Heydar Aliyev, Azerbaijan's late
president and, in the words of his son, "founder of an independent
Azeri state", and of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who really did create
the republic of Turkey from the ruins of the Ottoman Empire.
That the supermarket is Turkish-owned is not coincidental. The
juxtaposition of these two men is no accident either. Azerbaijan and
Turkey are bonded by ethnicity, language, religion and culture. Both
countries emerged from empires - Azerbaijan from the Soviet Union,
Turkey from its Ottoman imperial past.
Now, a growing cult of personality around Aliyev bears striking
parallels to, and may be a conscious attempt to emulate, the cult of
Ataturk, "father of the Turks", whose legacy still resonates in his
country three generations after his death in 1938.
In Baku, signs of the emerging cult of Aliyev, who died in 2003,
are everywhere. His portrait glowers from posters at traffic
intersections. The airport, schools and factories are named after
him. His bust is in public buildings.
Last week a vast oil pipeline that is the key to Azerbaijan's
future wealth was solemnly inaugurated as the Heydar Aliyev
Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan Oil Pipeline.
The man guiding this memorialisation of Aliyev is his son, Ilham
Aliyev, Azerbaijan's current president. At the ceremony to open the
pipeline, Aliyev the younger gave an emotional speech in memory of
his father.
"He was the architect, the strategist of Azerbaijan," he told
an audience that included the presidents of Turkey, Georgia and
Kazakhstan.
The old man was not present because "destiny has decided otherwise,
but his ideas are eternal for us".
Azeris are wearily familiar with the cult of personality from their
days as citizens of the Soviet Union. According to some western
observers in Baku, they may also be torn between their Soviet and
Turkish heritage, giving the parallels between the personality cults
of Aliyev and Ataturk added potency.
Some Azeris make the comparison explicit. Samir Sharifov, executive
director of the State Oil Fund in Baku, says that, just as Ataturk
rescued Turkey from occupation and destruction after the first world
war, Aliyev saved Azerbaijan from the same fate after independence from
the Soviet Union and a war with Armenia over the disputed territory
of Nagorno Karabakh. "Heydar Aliyev did for Azerbaijan what Ataturk
did for Turkey," he says.
Is the parallel justified? The two men could hardly be more
different. Ataturk was one of the great figures of the interwar years
in Europe, forcing Turkey to modernise and turn westward. His legacy
today is a democratic Turkey.
Aliyev was an apparatchik, the first non-Russian to head a KGB
operation in a Soviet republic (Azerbaijan), who climbed the Soviet
power apparatus to become a member of the Politburo. He was not the
first president of independent Azerbaijan, but the third, coming
to power in 1993 after internal unrest that he was instrumental in
fomenting. He changed the constitution to allow his son to succeed him.
Aliyev appears to have left Azerbaijan as a hereditary autocracy
that "he rules from beyond the grave", as a western official in Baku
puts it.
Nasib Nassibli, director of the Foundation for Azerbaijani Studies in
Baku, points out that Aliyev could have chosen to model his country
on Turkey's democratic system.
But, from instinct and training, "Heydar Aliyev didn't like the Turkish
version of democracy." What appealed, instead, was the memorialisation
of Ataturk, who has been dead for nearly 70 years but is still alive
in Turkey.
"The people of Azerbaijan need to feel that Heydar Aliyev is still
alive," Prof Nassibli says. "Turkey has given us a very bad example."