Recep Tayyip Erdoğan

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is a Turkish politician serving as the current President of Turkey. He previously served as Prime Minister of Turkey from 2003 to 2014 and as Mayor of Istanbul from 1994 to 1998. He founded the Justice and Development Party in 2001, leading it to election victories in 2002, 2007, and 2011. He lost his seat in the Turkish parliament in the 2013 general election, but was re-elected in the 2014 general election. In 2014, he was elected President, and re- elected in 2018.

About Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in brief

Summary Recep Tayyip ErdoğanRecep Tayyip Erdoğan is a Turkish politician serving as the current President of Turkey. He previously served as Prime Minister of Turkey from 2003 to 2014 and as Mayor of Istanbul from 1994 to 1998. He founded the Justice and Development Party in 2001, leading it to election victories in 2002, 2007, and 2011 before being required to stand down upon his election as President in 2014. He later returned to the AKP leadership in 2017 following the constitutional referendum that year. His foreign policy has been described as Neo-Ottoman and has led to the Turkish involvement in the Syrian Civil War. The Turkish currency crisis of 2018 has caused a significant decline in his popularity, which is widely believed to have contributed to the 2019 local elections, in which the ruling party lost control of Ankara for the first time in 15 years. He has since been tackling, but also accused of contributing to, the Turkish currency and debt crisis of2018. The redesignation of Hagia Sophia as a mosque has been controversial, invoking condemnation from the opposition, UNESCO, the World Council of Churches, and many international leaders. Erdoğan was born in Kasımpaşa, a poor neighborhood of Istanbul, to a poor family, which had moved from a poor, poor neighborhood to his family’s home. He is the son of a Turkish father and a Turkish mother, who had moved to the United States in the 1950s. He was educated at the University of Pennsylvania, where he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in economics.

He went on to earn a master’s degree from Oxford University. He currently lives in Istanbul with his wife and their two children, who live in a suburb of the city. He also has a son and a daughter, both of whom live in the city with their own parents. The couple have a daughter and a son-in-law, who lives in Ankara with his father. He is married to the wife of former Turkish Prime Minister Necmettin Akkoyunlu, who served as President of the Republic of Turkey between 1999 and 2003. He had a son, Cagaptay Erdoğan, who is also a politician and served as Deputy Prime Minister from 2007 to 2011. He lost his seat in the Turkish parliament in the 2013 general election, but was re-elected in the 2014 general election. In 2014, he was elected President, and re- elected in 2018. His government has been criticised for its close links with Fethullah Gülen and his Gül Movement. In late 2012, his government began peace negotiations with the Kurdistan Workers Party to end the Kurdish–Turkish conflict. The ceasefire broke down in 2015, leading to a renewed escalation in conflict. In 2013, he imposed growing censorship on the press and social media, restricting access to sites such as YouTube, Twitter and Wikipedia. A US$100 billion corruption scandal in 2013 led to Erdoğan’s close allies, and incriminated Erdoğan. In July 2016, a failed military coup d’état attempt in July 2016 resulted in further purges and a state of emergency.