TWO INFLUENTIAL FIRST LADIES - MEHRIBAN ALIYEVA AND ASMA-AL-ASAD

The Syrian president is visiting Azerbaijan with his wife as guests to the Azerbaijan president Iham Aliyev and his wife -Mehriban Aliyeva. Mr. Bashir al-Assad with his wife Mrs. Asma-al-Asad and their entourage will be in Azerbaijan for a 2 days working visit.

Both Iham Aliyev and Bashir al-Assad have got prominent women by their sides who are re-defining women of the East. In a wider perspective, both are good advocate in the promotion of the role of Islamic women in politics. Besides involvement in politics, both women had already to their credentials successful career paths; Mrs. Aliyeva is a qualified medical doctor, while it is well known that Mrs. al-Asad was born, bred and educated in London.

Yes, both first ladies are very beautiful. But that is only an added characteristic to the influence and power Mrs. Mehriban Aliyeva and her counterpart Mrs. Asma-al-Asad command in their respective countries. Both first ladies champion various courses in their various nations. Mehriban Aliyeva is the UNESCO representative for Azerbaijan, she is the president of the Heydar Aliyev fund and she is also a parliamentarian; while Asma-al-Asad is an advocate for various rights, including rights for Syrian women. Another correlated action with both first ladies is that they are both spokesperson for the Islamic agenda of their respective nation.

Comparing the Baku meeting of the first ladies to the global attention that Michelle and Carla Bruni the spouses of the US president, Barack Obama and the French president, Nicholas Sarkozy, Mehriban and Asma may not have attracted that magnitude of global attention as they stood side by side, but one thing is certain is that their role in the political spheres of this part of the globe is of noteworthy.