Erdogan: The omnipotent chief of Turkey for 20 years

From humble beginnings, Recep Tayyip Erdogan has grown right into a political big, main Turkey for 20 years and reshaping his nation greater than any chief since Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the revered father of the trendy republic.

Regardless of being hit by a collection of crises, he once more got here out on high within the first spherical of the 2023 presidential race and is anticipated to keep up his grip on energy.

He was in his most weak place for years, his opponents had been satisfied they might defeat him.

Critics blamed his unorthodox financial insurance policies for exacerbating Turkey's cost-of-living disaster.

And for an embattled chief who constructed a proud document of modernizing and creating Turkey, he appeared sluggish to react to the lack of greater than 50,00Zero lives in twin earthquakes in February.

After surviving a coup try in 2016, he turned his presidency into an more and more powerful govt position and cracked down on opponents and dissent.

First as prime minister since 2003 after which as straight elected president since 2014, Recep Tayyip Erdogan has flexed Turkey's muscle mass as a regional energy, championed Islamist causes and been fast to outmaneuver political opposition.

Though he’s the pinnacle of a NATO nation, he has positioned himself as a mediator in Russia's battle in Ukraine and has saved Sweden on maintain in its bid to affix the Western protection alliance. His muscular diplomacy has guided allies in Europe and past.

He has polarized his nation, however President Erdogan is a confirmed winner of elections. His supporters name him king – “boss”.

Accusing his opponents of treating Turkey's citizens with contempt and failing to win them over, he declared: “As 85 million we’ll defend our vote, our will and our future.”

Born in February 1954, Recep Tayyip Erdogan grew up the son of a coast guard on Turkey's Black Beach. When he was 13, his father determined to maneuver to Istanbul, hoping to present his 5 kids a greater schooling.

Younger Erdogan bought lemonade and sesame buns to earn extra cash. He attended an Islamic faculty earlier than getting a level in administration from Istanbul's Marmara College – and enjoying skilled soccer.

Within the 1970s and 80s, he was energetic in Islamic circles, becoming a member of Necmettin Erbakan's Professional-Islamic Welfare Occasion. Because the get together grew in recognition within the 1990s, Erdogan was chosen as its candidate for mayor of Istanbul in 1994 and led town for the following 4 years.

However his tenure ended when he was convicted of inciting racial hatred for publicly studying a nationalist poem that included the traces: “Mosques are our barracks, domes are our helmets, minarets our bayonets and the trustworthy our troopers.”

After 4 months in jail, I returned to politics. However his get together was banned for violating the strict secular rules of the trendy Turkish state.

In August 2001, he based a brand new get together with Islamic roots with ally Abdullah Gul. In 2002, the AKP received a majority within the parliamentary elections and the next 12 months Mr. Erdogan was appointed prime minister. He stays the chairman of AKP or the Occasion for Justice and Improvement to today.

Since 2003, he has served three phrases as prime minister, presiding over a interval of sustained financial development and successful worldwide acclaim as a reformer. The center class expanded and hundreds of thousands had been lifted out of poverty as Mr Erdogan prioritized big infrastructure initiatives to modernize Turkey.

However critics warned that he was turning into more and more autocratic.

By 2013, protesters took to the streets, partly over his authorities's plans to remodel a much-loved park in central Istanbul, but in addition in a problem to extra authoritarian rule. The prime minister denounced the protesters as “capulcu” (riff-raff), and neighborhoods would bang their pots and pans each evening at 9 o'clock in a spirit of defiance. Allegations of corruption uncovered the sons of three cupboard allies.

The Gezi Park protests marked a turning level of their governance. To his opponents, he was behaving extra like a sultan from the Ottoman Empire than a democrat.

Erdogan additionally clashed with a US-based Islamic scholar named Fethullah Gulen, whose social and cultural motion had helped him win three consecutive elections and had been energetic in preserving the army out of politics. It was a feud that may have dramatic penalties for Turkish society.

After a decade of his rule, Erdogan's get together additionally moved to carry a ban on ladies carrying headscarves in public companies that was launched after a army coup in 1980. The ban was finally lifted on ladies within the police, military and judiciary. .

Critics complained that he had damaged the pillars of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk's secular republic. Whereas spiritual himself, Erdogan has at all times denied desirous to impose Islamic values, insisting he helps the rights of Turks to precise their faith extra brazenly.

Nevertheless, he has persistently supported the criminalization of adultery. And as a father of 4, he has mentioned that “no Muslim household” ought to contemplate contraception or household planning. “We’ll multiply our descendants,” he mentioned in Could 2016.

He has praised motherhood, condemned feminists and mentioned that women and men can’t be handled equally.

Mr Erdogan has lengthy championed Islamic causes – and was recognized to present the four-finger salute to Egypt's oppressed Muslim Brotherhood.

In July 2020, he oversaw the conversion of Istanbul's historic Hagia Sophia right into a mosque, angering many Christians. Constructed 1,500 years in the past as a cathedral, it was became a mosque by the Ottoman Turks, however Ataturk had turned it right into a museum – a logo of the brand new secular state.

It was no coincidence that the president selected to deal with supporters at night prayers inside hours of the beginning of the 2023 voting.

Banned from operating for prime minister once more, in 2014 he stood for the largely ceremonial position of president in an unprecedented direct election. He had huge plans to reform the publish, create a brand new structure that may profit all Turks and put their nation among the many world's high 10 economies.

However early in his presidency, he confronted two threats to his energy. His get together misplaced its majority in parliament for a number of months in a 2015 vote, after which months later in 2016, Turkey witnessed its first violent coup try in many years.

Insurgent troopers got here near capturing the president, who was resting at a seaside resort, however he was airlifted to security. Within the early hours of July 16, he emerged triumphantly at Istanbul's Ataturk Airport to cheers from supporters. Nearly 300 civilians had been killed as they blocked the coup plotters' advance.

The president appeared on nationwide tv and rallied supporters in Istanbul, declaring that he was the “commander in chief”. However the pressure was clear when he sobbed brazenly as he gave a speech on the funeral of a detailed buddy, shot along with his son by insurgent troopers.

The plot was blamed on the Gulen motion and led to the dismissal of some 150,00Zero public servants and the arrest of greater than 50,00Zero folks, together with Kurdish troopers, journalists, legal professionals, law enforcement officials, teachers and politicians.

The crackdown on critics brought on alarm overseas, contributing to chilly relations with the EU: Turkey's bid to affix the union has not progressed for years. Arguments about an inflow of migrants to Greece worsened the unhealthy feeling.

However from his gleaming 1,00Zero-room Ak Saray palace overlooking Ankara, President Erdogan's place regarded safer than ever.

He narrowly received a 2017 referendum, giving him sweeping presidential powers, together with the correct to impose a state of emergency and appoint senior public officers, in addition to intervene within the authorized system.

A 12 months later, he secured a whole victory within the first spherical of the presidential elections.

His principal vote lies in Anatolia's small cities and rural, conservative areas. In 2019, his get together misplaced within the three largest cities – Istanbul; the capital, Ankara; and Izmir.

The Istanbul mayor's loss to Ekrem Imamoglu of the principle opposition Republican Individuals's Occasion (CHP) was a bitter blow for Mr. Erdogan, who was mayor of town within the 1990s. I’ve by no means accepted the outcome.

Mr. Imamoglu was forward of the president in opinion polls earlier than he was dominated out of operating in Could's election. The president and his allies had been accused of utilizing the courts to disqualify the favored mayor from the vote.

Turkey's third-largest get together, the pro-Kurdish HDP, additionally feared it could be barred from the parliamentary vote due to suspected hyperlinks to Kurdish militants, however as an alternative determined to face underneath a special banner.

Like earlier Turkish leaders, President Erdogan has cracked down on the outlawed Kurdistan Employees' Occasion (PKK).

Though Turkey has taken in additional than three.5 million refugees fleeing the Syrian civil battle, Ankara has additionally launched operations towards Kurdish militias throughout the border, driving Kurds again into Turkey.

Erdogan has lengthy maintained shut ties with Russia's Vladimir Putin and has sought a key position as mediator within the battle in Ukraine.

Regardless of being the chief of a NATO nation, he purchased a Russian missile protection system and selected Russia to construct Turkey's first nuclear reactor.

Forward of the 2023 election, he sought to bolster his credentials with nationalist and conservative voters by accusing the West of transferring towards him.

“My nation will break this plot,” he claimed, describing it as a breaking level of kinds.

He ended his 2023 presidential marketing campaign with a go to to the mausoleum of Adnan Menderes, Turkey's first democratically elected prime minister, who was executed in 1961 after a army coup.

His message: “The period of coups and conferences is over.”