Recep Tayyip Erdoğan

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (/ˈɛərdəwæn/;[2] Turkish: [ɾeˈdʒep tajˈjip ˈæɾdoan] (About this soundlisten); born 26 February 1954) is a Turkish politician serving as the 12th and current President of Turkey since 2014. He previously served as Prime Minister from 2003 to 2014 and as Mayor of Istanbul from 1994 to 1998. He founded the Justice and Development Party (AKP) in 2001, leading it to general election victories in 2002, 2007 and 2011 before standing down upon his election as President in 2014. Coming from an Islamist political background and as a self-described conservative democrat, he has promoted socially conservative and liberal economic policies in his administration.[3] Under his administration, Turkey has experienced democratic backsliding.[4]

Erdoğan played football for Kasımpaşa before being elected in 1994 as the Mayor of Istanbul from the Islamist Welfare Party. He was stripped of his position, banned from political office, and imprisoned for four months, for reciting a poem that promoted a religious point of view of government during a speech in 1998.[5] Erdoğan abandoned openly Islamist politics and established the moderate conservative AKP in 2001. Following the AKP's landslide victory in 2002, the party's co-founder Abdullah Gül became Prime Minister, until his government annulled Erdoğan's ban from political office. Erdoğan became Prime Minister in March 2003 after winning a by-election in Siirt.[6]

Erdoğan's government oversaw negotiations for Turkey's membership in the European Union, an economic recovery following a financial crash in 2001, changes to the constitution via referenda in 2007 and 2010, a Neo-Ottoman foreign policy, and investments in infrastructure including roads, airports, and a high-speed train network,[7][8] and finally the Turkish currency and debt crisis of 2018.[9][10][11] With the help of the Cemaat Movement led by preacher Fethullah Gülen, Erdoğan was able to curb the power of the military through the Sledgehammer and Ergenekon court cases. In late 2012, his government began peace negotiations with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) to end the ongoing PKK insurgency that began in 1978. The ceasefire broke down in 2015, leading to a renewed escalation in conflict. In 2016, a coup d'état was unsuccessfully attempted against Erdoğan and Turkish state institutions. This was followed by purges and an ongoing state of emergency.

Political scientists no longer consider Turkey as a fully fledged democracy, citing the lack of free and fair elections, purges and jailing of opponents, curtailed press freedom, and Erdoğan's efforts to broadening his executive powers and minimize his executive accountability.[4][12][13][14] Widespread 2013 protests broke out against the perceived authoritarianism of Erdoğan's policies; he criticized the protestors and then had them suppressed by police, which killed 22 people, injured numerous others and brought international condemnation from foreign governments and human rights organizations. This stalled negotiations related to EU membership. Following a split with Gülen, Erdoğan promulgated sweeping judicial reforms he insisted were needed to purge Gülen's sympathisers, but which were criticised for threatening judicial independence. A US$100 billion corruption scandal in 2013 led to the arrests of Erdoğan's close allies, and incriminated Erdoğan.[15][16][17] His government has since come under fire for alleged human rights violations and crackdown on press and social media, having blocked access to Wikipedia, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube on numerous occasions.[18] Erdoğan's government lifted the bans when directed by court orders,[19][20][21] but later reimposed them.[22][23] In 2016, Turkey under Erdoğan began a crackdown on freedom of the press; in 2016 and 2017, more journalists have been incarcerated in Turkey than in any other country.[24] He was re-elected in the 2018 general election and assumed the role of Executive President and became both the head of state and head of government.