Recep Tayyip Ersoğan (born 26 February 1954) was Prime Minister of Turkey from 14 March 2003 to 28 August 2014 (succeeding Abdullah Gul and preceding Ahmed Davutoglu) and President of Turkey from 28 August 2014 (succeeding Abdullah Gul). Ersoğan was the leader of the Islamist and Neo-Ottoman Justice and Development Party (AKP), seeking to revive the former Ottoman Empire as well as its Islamic culture and its far-reaching influence in the Middle East and Europe. During his service as President, he advocated giving himself greater powers with an executive presidency, and he increased Turkey's role in the world, supporting terrorists in Syria, renewing sectarian conflict with the Kurds, and sparking tensions with Russia.
Biography[]
Early life[]
Recep Tayyip Ersoğan was born on 26 February 1954 in Istanbul, Turkey to a family of Georgians that had immigrated from Batumi to Rize, where he spent his early childhood (however, the version of Georgian origin is controversial, and was denied by Erdogan himself). Erdoğan sold lemonade and sesame buns on the rough streets of Rize to earn money, and he graduated from the Imam Hatip religious vocational school in 1973. He continued his education at Marmara University's Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences with a major in Business Administration, but he may not have graduated.
Entry into politics[]
Erdogan speaking for the Welfare Party
It was, however, at this time that he found his true calling of politics, joining the anti-communist National Turkish Student Union and writing, directing, and starring in a 1974 play that portrayed the Freemasons, communists, and Jews as evil. In 1983, he joined the Islamist Welfare Party, and in 1985 he became the leader of its Istanbul branch. He was elected to parliament in 1991, but he was barred from entering. On 27 March 1994, however, he was elected Mayor of Istanbul, his first major political office. He tacked water shortage, pollution, and traffic chaos, laying down new pipelines, starting state-of-the-art recycling facilities, and switching from oil to natural gas. He also had fifty bridges, viaducts, and highways built to stop traffic jams, and he was granted the United Nations Habitat Award for his service to environmentalism. In 1998, however, he became an opposition figure when the Islamist Welfare Party was banned due to its contradiction of Turkey's secularism, and from 24 March to 27 July 1999 he was imprisoned for reciting Turkish nationalist literature, seen as hate speech.
Prime Minister of Turkey[]
Erdogan, a Turkish nationalist, wearing traditional Turkmen clothing
In response to the ban on the Welfare Party, Erdoğan decided to found the Justice and Development Party, winning a landslide victory in the 2002 elections that landed Erdoğan in the office of Prime Minister. Erdoğan pledged to end the conflict with the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) guerrillas, reverting Kurdish-majority Turkish cities' names to their old Kurdish names and allowing for the Kurdish language to be used in the media. While he apologized for the Turkification campaigns that led to the 1937 and 1938 Dersim massacres, he refused to recognize the Armenian Genocide as a genocide, saying that it was not possible for a Muslim to commit genocide.
Erdoğan also reversed years of democratic rule in Turkey, and freedom of speech, freedom of the press, gay rights, and Kurdish minority rights were restricted. He also banned all advertising of alcoholic beverages and increased a tax on them, raising the legal drinking age from 18 to 24 in 2011 before the law was abolished two years later. He did make improvements in education, travel, and population growth, saying that each family should have at least three children.
In 2013, Erdoğan's authoritarian rule led to the infamous Gezi Park protests, which saw the Turkish population rise up against Erdoğan in massive demonstrations. 22 people were killed, 8,163+ wounded, and 4,900+ arrested as police put down the crowds, deteriorating relations with the European Union and leading to Erdoğan increasing government control over the internet, criminalizing giving medical care to protesters, and expanding the police's powers.
Presidency[]
Erdogan's inauguration as President
On 1 July 2014, he ran for President of Turkey as Ahmet Davutoglu ran as the Justice and Development Party's prime ministerial candidate, using the slogans "People's Man Erdoğan" and "Bring Strength to Turkey". With 51.79% of the vote, he won the elections and took office on 28 August 2014. After taking office, he stated that he would not maintain presidential neutrality as required, giving more power to the AKP and persecuting the other parties, especially the Kurdish and leftist parties. Erdoğan built the opulent Ak Saray presidential palace next to the Ataturk Forest Farm, taking over protected land for his own private estate. While mining accidents and workers' rights protests went on, Erdoğan built a 1,000-room complex with a cost of $350,000,000, and on 29 October 2014 most of the people that he invited to a Republic Day celebration boycotted the palace, causing him to cancel the party.
As president, Erdoğan had a greater role in managing Turkey's foreign policy, namely the Syrian Civil War. He allowed for Islamic State fighters to receive medical care in Turkey, turned a blind eye to routes that ISIS sympathizers from Europe used to reach Syria, and refused to take part in battles against ISIS on the border, with Turkish Army tanks and soldiers simply watching the battles at Kobani and Manbij in 2015 and 2016 and a crew of Turkish soldiers being filmed fraternizing with an IS anti-aircraft crew. Erdoğan was criticized for his alleged support of the Islamic State, and he earned more criticism for his open support for the Ahrar ash-Sham, al-Nusra Front (an al-Qaeda affiliate), and Jaysh al-Islam Islamist factions, among others, during the civil war. Rather than sending planes to bomb the Islamic State, he sent planes to bomb Kurdish forces in northern Syria and northern Iraq, exerting all of his power abroad while the Islamic State and Kurdistan Freedom Falcons (TAK) carried out a spate of terrorist attacks back home.
In July 2016, following seven months of horrible terrorist attacks, the Turkish Army took advantage of public disorder to launch a coup. Erdoğan blamed the Pennsylvania-based moderate imam Fethullah Gulen for inspiring the 2016 Turkish coup attempt, which nearly overthrew him. However, he rallied his supporters via FaceTime on CNN Turk, ordering them to rise up and defy the military. From 15 to 16 July 2016, the coup was put down with hundreds of deaths, and Erdoğan had up to 50,000 soldiers, judges, government officials, and generals purged, arresting them and booting them from office. He used the coup to increase the power of his AKP dictatorship, and he moved away from the West to form his own autocracy.