Pray for President Erdogan

After serving as mayor of Istanbul from 1994 to 1999, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (b. 1954) served as Prime Minister from 2003 until 2014, when term limits forced him to step down. Erdoğan was elected President of Turkey in August 2014. He then oversaw constitutional changes that elevated the ceremonial role of president into the actual head of state. President Erdoğan has a “moderate” Islamist agenda and is steadily moving the country toward Islamist ideological conservatism.

Recep Erdoğan is the son of Ahmet Erdoğan, a captain in the coastguard. He spent his childhood in the coastal city of Rize, but his father moved the family to Istanbul when Erdoğan was 13 to give his three children more opportunities. Erdoğan was given a religious upbringing and schooling. He married Emine Gülbaran in 1978, and they have two daughters and two sons.

He got involved in politics in an Islamist student movement in college, and then played football and studied business administration at the graduate level. He was mentored by Necmettin Erbakan, an Islamist politician who later served as Prime Minister from 1996-97. Erdoğan was elected to parliament with the Islamist Welfare Party in Istanbul in 1991, but was barred from taking office by the secular government. Then, in 1994 he was elected mayor of Istanbul. He had a successful term as mayor, and his national reputation grew.

Erdoğan’s time as mayor ended in 1999 when he was imprisoned for inciting religious hatred. In 2001, Erdoğan set up the Justice and Development Party (AKP) and ran as its leader in the 2002 elections. The AKP won with 34.4% of the national vote, and he formed the government. After his ban from holding public office was lifted, he became Prime Minister in a landslide victory in the 2003 election. Since then, the AKP has won in 2007, 2011, 2014 and 2018. Erdoğan has been the leader of Turkey since 2002, having survived a secularist attempt to overthrow him in 2016.

Erdoğan initially demonstrated considerable ability as leader and saw the country prosper. More recently, he has drawn increasing criticism for his autocratic ways. Critics see him aspiring to create an Ottoman-like regime, setting himself up as Sultan. He has shut down freedom of the press, curtailed women’s rights, and his rule is increasingly arbitrary. He is mandating Islamist ideology in the universities as he seeks to destroy a century of secularism.