Political Leadership: Understanding Heydar Aliyev Through Insights from Charles de Gaulle and Abraham Lincoln

When we compare Heydar Aliyev to Charles de Gaulle and Abraham Lincoln—although the Azerbaijani leader came from a much smaller country—he holds up rather well. All three were brilliant politicians, Aliyev perhaps in one respect even more so because he rose to the near top and then the very pinnacle in two diametrically different political systems, first the communist Soviet Union and then the newly rebirthed nationalist Azerbaijan. All three retired in apparent failure, only to return in even greater guise to literally save their nation from destruction. Like de Gaulle during World War II and again in 1958 when the Fourth Republic was collapsing, and Lincoln almost a century earlier during the US Civil War from 1861 to 1865, Heydar Aliyev has come to be viewed as his country’s honored savior. However, in the West, Aliyev’s reputation has suffered because he spent his career in two authoritarian regimes where human rights often took a back seat.