Friends Of STAR

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (born February 26, 1954) is the Prime Minister of the Republic of Turkey and a former mayor of Istanbul. He is also the chairman of the Justice and Development Party (AK Parti), which holds a majority of the seats in the Grand National Assembly of Turkey.

Erdoğan graduated in 1981 from Marmara University's Faculty of Economics and Commercial Sciences. He was involved in politics from the age of eighteen. Erdoğan was also engaged in the sport as a semi-professional football player from 1969 to 1982.

Erdoğan was elected Mayor of Istanbul in the local elections of March 27, 1994. He was banned from office and sentenced to a prison term because of a poem he recited during a public address in the province of Siirt on December 12, 1997. The poem was quoted from a book published by a state enterprise and one that had been recommended to teachers by the Ministry of Education. After four months in prison, Erdoğan established the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) on August 14, 2001. From its first year, the AK Party became the largest publicly-supported political movement in Turkey. In 2002, the general elections resulted with the AK Party winning nearly two-thirds of the seats in parliament, forming a single-party government after 19 years.

As prime minister, Erdoğan implemented numerous reforms. After 45 years, the negotiations for Turkey's accession to the EU started during Erdoğan's tenure. Parallel to this, inflation, which had for decades adversely affected the country's economy, was taken under control and the Turkish Lira retrieved its former prestige through the elimination of six zeros. Interest rates for public borrowings were pulled down; per capita income grew significantly. The AK party won the elections of 2007 making it the first time in 52 years that a party in power has increased its votes for a second term.

In 2011, Erdoğan declared his intention to seek re-election in the 2011 general election.

Erdoğan was born in the Kasımpaşa neighborhood of Istanbul to a family that moved from Rize Province. When he visited Georgia on August 11, 2004, he said I'm a Georgian too, my family is Georgian family, migrated from Batumi to Rize. But retired high school teacher and historian Cezmi Yurtsever claims that his family descends from the family of Bagatlı Recep, a large Muslim Turkish family that was settled around Trabzon after Mehmed II's conquest of the city. "Bagatlı Recep" (meaning Recep from Bagat), died in 1916 fighting against the invading Russian and Armenian forces.

Erdoğan spent his early childhood in Rize, where his father was a member of the Turkish Coast Guard. The family returned to Istanbul when Erdoğan was 13 years old. His mother's name is Tenzile Erdoğan. As a teenager, Erdoğan sold lemonade and sesame buns (simit) on the streets of Istanbul's rougher districts to earn extra money. Brought up in a observant Muslim family, he graduated from Kasımpaşa Piyale primary school in 1965 and from Istanbul Religious Vocational High School in 1973 (İmam Hatip school). Erdoğan received his high school diploma from Eyüp High School. He then studied Business Administration at Aksaray School of Economics and Commercial Sciences (now it is known as Marmara University's Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences).

In his youth, Erdoğan played semi-professional football in a local club. The stadium of the local football club of the district he grew up in, Kasımpaşa S.K., a team which is currently playing in the Turkish Süper Lig, is named after him.

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan married Emine Erdoğan (née Gülbaran) (b. 1955 in Siirt), whom he met during a conference, on 4 July 1978. The couple has two sons (Ahmet Burak, Necmeddin Bilâl) and two daughters (Esra, Sümeyye). Erdoğan gave a speech in New York on 19 December 2006 in which he talked mainly about the good relations between citizens of Turkey who come from different backgrounds by giving an example from his own life. Erdoğan's first grandson was born in 2006.

While studying business administration at what is today Marmara University's Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences and playing semi-professional football, Erdoğan also engaged in politics by joining the National Turkish Student Union, an anti-communist action group. In 1976, he became the head of Beyoğlu youth branch of the Islamist National Salvation Party (MSP). That same year, he was promoted to the position of chair for the Istanbul youth branch of the party.

After the 1980 military coup, Erdoğan followed most of Erbakan's followers into the Welfare Party. He became the party's Beyoglu district chair in 1984, and in 1985 he became the chair of the Istanbul city branch. He was elected to parliament in 1991, but barred from taking his seat.

In the local elections of March 27, 1994 Erdoğan was elected Mayor of Istanbul, the social and economic capital of Turkey and one of the biggest metropolitan areas of the world. He received 25.19% of the popular vote. Many feared that he would impose Islamic law. However, he proved to be very pragmatic in office. Erdoğan tackled many chronic problems of Istanbul, such as water shortage, pollution and traffic chaos. The water shortage problem was solved with the laying of hundreds of kilometers of new pipelines. The garbage problem was solved with the establishment of state-of-the-art recycling facilities. While Erdoğan was in office, air pollution was reduced through a plan developed to switch to natural gas. He changed the public buses with environmentally friendly buses. The city's traffic and transportation jams were ameliorated with more than fifty bridges, viaducts, and highways. Erdoğan also prohibited the sale of alcohol in city services. After a period, this measure was reversed. While taking precautions to prevent corruption, Erdoğan took measures to ensure that municipal funds were used prudently. Erdoğan paid back a major portion of Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality's two billion dollar debt when he took office and meanwhile invested four billion dollars in the city.

Erdoğan initiated the first roundtable of mayors during the Istanbul conference, which led to a global, organized movement of mayors. Because of his works, a seven member international jury from the United Nations unanimously found Erdoğan deserving the UN-HABITAT award.

Before his conviction, the Welfare Party was declared unconstitutional and was shut down by the Turkish constitutional court on the grounds of threatening the Kemalist nature of Turkey. Erdogan became a constant speaker at the demonstrations held by his party colleagues.

He was given a 10 month prison sentence (of which he served four) for reading a poem in Siirt in December 1997, which, under article 312/2 of the Turkish penal code was regarded as a violation of Kemalism by the judges. It included verses translated as "The mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets and the faithful our soldiers...." The poem was a work by Ziya Gökalp, a pan-Turkish activist of the early 20th century. Erdogan has in his defence said that the poem had been approved by the education ministry to be published in textbooks.With the conviction, Erdogan was forced to give up his mayoral position. The conviction also stipulated a political ban, which prevented him from participating in parliamentary elections. He completed his sentence on 24 July 1999.

In 2001, Erdoğan established the moderate Justice and Development Party with renewalists (yenilikçiler) of the former Fazilet Partisi and Anavatan Partisi members. The AK Party won a landslide victory in the 2002 election, taking nearly two-thirds of the seats. However, Erdoğan could not became prime minister right away, as he was still banned from politics by the judiciary for his speech in Siirt, and deputy leader Gül thus became the prime minister instead. In December 2002 the Supreme Election Board canceled the general election results from Siirt due to voting irregularities and scheduled a new election for February 9, 2003. By this time, party leader Erdoğan was able to run for Parliament thanks to a legal change made possible by the opposition Republican People's Party. The AK Party duly listed Erdoğan as a candidate for the rescheduled Siirt election, and he won, becoming prime minister after Gül subsequently handed over the post - Wikipedia