Teymur Heydar oglu Yahyayev was an Azerbaijani journalist, political commentator and official who twice served as head of the executive authority of the Masally District in southern Azerbaijan, first briefly in 1991 and 1992 and then from 1993 to 2000. Before entering government he had built a career at the Soviet and later Russian news agency ITAR-TASS, and after leaving office he worked in business in Russia.
He was born on 1 January 1955 in the village of Arkivan in the Masally District, into the family of Heydar Yahyayev, a lieutenant colonel. He studied in the journalism faculty of the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO). Azerbaijani reports note that during his student years there he became friends with Ilham Aliyev, who later became the country's president.
Yahyayev began his working life as a journalist at the ITAR-TASS news agency, rising from correspondent to the post of director. On 4 November 1991, shortly after Azerbaijan regained its independence, President Ayaz Mutalibov appointed him head of the Masally District executive authority. He was removed on 2 June 1992 by decree of Isa Gambar, then acting head of state, after the Azerbaijani Popular Front came to power.
After Heydar Aliyev became president, Yahyayev was reappointed head of the Masally executive authority on 8 November 1993. He held the post for almost seven years, until he was released by presidential order on 30 July 2000. He then moved into business in the Russian Federation and spent his later years in Saint Petersburg.
Yahyayev died in Saint Petersburg on 26 October 2026 at the age of 71. According to Azerbaijani media, he had undergone open heart surgery and did not regain consciousness afterwards. His body was brought back to his native Arkivan, where a farewell was planned at his home on 27 October before burial beside his parents in the Hasanakucha neighbourhood cemetery. News of his death was widely reported in Azerbaijan, where he was remembered as a well known journalist, political analyst and public figure.
His two terms in Masally spanned the most unsettled years of the new Azerbaijani state, from the collapse of the Soviet Union through the changes of power in 1992 and 1993 to the more settled period of the late 1990s. A native of Arkivan, he governed the district in which he was born, and at the end of his life he was brought home to be buried there beside his parents.
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