Abstract
Since the founding of the Heydar Aliyev Foundation in 2004, this institution has been actively involved in large-scale international cultural relations. The purpose of creating this fund was to preserve and popularize the legacy of the national leader of the Azerbaijani people, Heydar Aliyev, to convey the truth about Azerbaijan to the world community, and to familiarize with its history, culture, and spiritual values. The purpose of this article is to determine the stages of formation and development of the Heydar Aliyev Foundation, to analyze the directions of its multi-vector activity and to justify the role of the Foundation in forming a positive image of independent Azerbaijan. Along with general logical methods, the methods of political monitoring, content analysis, historical and comparative analysis are used, which make it possible to highlight the complex of activities carried out by the Fund and to forecast the trends of its further activity. Since the foundation of the Foundation, important projects have been developed and successfully implemented to protect the welfare of the Azerbaijani people, protect their national heritage and moral values. The Heydar Aliyev Foundation, paying special attention to the expansion of cooperation with Islamic countries in the field of science and culture, ensured the achievement of the highest level of development of relations between Azerbaijan and the Islamic Organization for Education, Science and Culture. The Heydar Aliyev Foundation paid serious attention to the expansion of cooperation within the framework of the UN, which resulted in the adoption of the Program on creating conditions for the use of information and communication technologies by people with visual impairments. According to the results of the research, it was established that the Heydar Aliyev Foundation, in cooperation with the government, parliament and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, plays the role of one of the effective means of implementing the foreign policy, social, humanitarian, political, economic and cultural strategy of Azerbaijan. The Foundation was able to form a positive image of Azerbaijan on an international scale, establishing constructive cooperation in all spheres, both with individual states and with influential international and regional organizations.