Recep Tayyip Erdoğan

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**Recep Tayyip Erdoğan**
Image:Erdogan.png
Born	February 26 1954 İstanbul
Title	57th Prime Minister of Turkey
Term	March 14, 2003 - present
Predecessor	Abdullah Gül
Successor	Incumbent
Political party	AKP (Justice and Development Party)
Spouse	Emine Erdoğan

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Image:Türkiye arması.svg This article is part of the series: Politics and government of Turkey

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Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (born February 26, 1954), became Prime Minister of Turkey on March 14, 2003. He is the leader of the Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi (AKP, or Justice and Development Party).

1 Early life and career
2 Political career
3 References
4 External links

[edit] Early life and career

Erdoğan was born in Istanbul, but spent his early childhood in Rize on the Black Sea Coast before returning to Istanbul at the age of 13. He was educated at a religious Imam Hatip school and at Marmara University's school of economics and business. Erdoğan played semi-professional football for 16 years and worked for Istanbul's municipal transport company, IETT and became active in politics with the now-defunct National Salvation Party (Milli Selâmet Partisi), led by Necmettin Erbakan.

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After the military coup of 12 September 1980, he gave up football and left to work in the private sector, before going for mandatory military service in 1982 as a commissioned officer.

[edit] Political career

After the 1980 coup, all political parties were disbanded, but the National Salvation Party's former members founded the Welfare Party (Refah Partisi) after the restoration of democracy in 1983. In 1985 Erdoğan became the Welfare Party's chairman in Istanbul Province and stood for election as Mayor of the cosmopolitan Beyoğlu borough in central Istanbul and as a candidate for the Turkish Grand National Assembly several times in the late 1980s.

In 1991, the Welfare Party passed the 10 % threshold necessary to gain seats in the Grand National Assembly for the first time, and Erdoğan was elected as a Member of Parliament from Istanbul Province, however this was withdrawn by the High Electoral Committee due to the then-existing voting system. In the local elections of 27 March 1994, however, the Welfare Party became the largest party in Turkey for the first time, and Erdoğan became Mayor of Greater Istanbul as well as President of the Greater Istanbul Metropolitan Council.

As Mayor of Istanbul, he made a name for himself as a populist, effective administrator, building up Istanbul's infrastructure and transportation grid, while simultaneously beautifying the city, becoming one of Turkey's most popular politicians in the process.

On 12 December, 1997 at a public meeting in Siirt in southeastern Turkey, he recited a well-known poem written by secular nationalist poet Ziya Gökalp, stating "Mosques are our barracks, domes our helmets, minarets our bayonets, believers our soldiers." ("Asker Duasi" [Prayer of the Soldier] by Ziya Gökalp, 1912, in Ziya Gökalp Kulliyati-I, ed. F. A. Tansel, Istanbul: Turk Tarih Kurumu Yayinlari, 1989). But according to several historians, the lines which Erdoğan recited were not included in the original poem of Gökalp.<ref name="gokalp poem">Bardakçı, Murat (September 22, 2002). Şiiri böyle montajlamışlar (The poem was edited this way, Turkish). Hürriyet. Retrieved on 2006-11-19.</ref> As a consequence, he was tried and convicted of inciting religious hatred in 1998. He was sentenced to ten months imprisonment of which he served four between March and July 1999.

During this period Turkish Islamist politics entered a period of chaos. In 1997, the Welfare Party was declared unconstitutional and was shut down on the grounds of threatening the secular nature of the state. The disbanded party promptly reformed itself under a new name, the Virtue Party (Fazilet Partisi), which in turn was found unconstitutional on the same grounds in 1999. Erdoğan led his group into the new Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi), while the traditionalists formed the Felicity Party (Saadet Partisi). The Justice and Development Party, on the back of widespread discontent with the traditional parties' handling of the economy and the 1999 earthquake, took 34.3% of the vote in the 3 November, 2002 parliamentary elections, and due to Turkey's system of allotting seats, won an overall majority in the Grand National Assembly.

Erdoğan's appointment as Prime Minister was delayed after his party's victory in the elections for legal reasons. The prime minister in Turkey must be a member of parliament and the constitution excluded those with previous convictions from standing. A prominent supporter of Erdoğan, Abdullah Gül, became a stand-in prime minister and pushed through a constitutional amendment that allowed Erdoğan to win a freshly vacant seat in the province of Siirt in a by-election. Gül resigned (to become foreign minister) and Erdoğan was appointed Prime Minister by President Ahmet Necdet Sezer.

In May 2004, he became the first Turkish Prime Minister to visit Greece since 1988, and the first to visit the Turkish minority of Thrace since 1952. The visit was remarkably congenial on both sides, and Erdoğan scored an important victory when his Greek counterpart, Costas Caramanlis, declared that Greece would support a Turkish bid for European Union membership, a major aim of Erdoğan's administration (see Accession of Turkey to the European Union).

On 17 October 2006, the Premier Erdoğan suffered while in public a mild shock due to hypoglycemia, certainly influenced by the corporal fatigue caused by the Ramadan's day of fasting. He was hospitalized but the doctors view his state of health as being of no serious concern further than requiring a few days of rest.

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is married to Emine Erdoğan since 4 July, 1978, and they have two sons and two daughters.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

Political offices
Preceded by: Nurettin Sözen	Mayor of İstanbul 1994–1998	Succeeded by: Ali Müfit Gürtuna
Preceded by: Abdullah Gül	Prime Minister of Turkey 2003–present	Succeeded by: incumbent

	Mayors of İstanbul	Image:Flag of Turkey.svg
	Mayors as Province Governor (1923-1960)
	Yuluğ \| Erkul \| Üstündağ \| Kırdar \| Gökay \| Hadımlı \| Tarhan \| Yetkiner \| Aygün
	Mayors appointed by military (1960-1963)
	Tulga \| Erensu \| Ertuğ \| İlkay \| Görgün \| Akı \| Uğur
	Elected mayors (1963-1980)
	İşcan \| Ilgaz \| Atabey \| İsvan \| Kotil
	Mayors appointed by military (1980-1984)
	Akansel \| Kutay \| Tırtıl
	Greater İstanbul mayors (1984-present)
	Dalan \| Sözen \| Erdoğan \| Gürtuna \| Topbaş