Biography Recep Tayyip Erdogan

Recep Tayyip Erdogan was born on February 26, 1954 (1), in the Kasimpasa quarter of Istanbul, Turkey, to parents Ahmet and Tenzile Erdogan. Erdogan was elected head of the party's Beyoglu Youth Branch and Istanbul Youth Branch in 1976. The party was dissolved in the wake of a 1980 military coup, and after Erdogan earned a graduate degree from Marmara University’s Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences in 1981, he worked as an accountant and a manager in the private sector.

Erdogan returned to politics with the formation of the Welfare Party in 1983, becoming the Beyoglu District head in 1984. The following year, he was voted the Istanbul Provincial head and named to the Central Executive Board. Tasked with improving voter turnout, Erdogan was credited for the party's success in the 1989 municipal elections.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan was elected mayor of Istanbul in 1994. The first Islamist to serve in this role, he demonstrated his religious commitment by banning alcohol from city-owned cafes. He also successfully tackled the city's water shortage, reduced pollution and improved infrastructure, helping to modernize the country's capital (2).

Erdogan came under serious fire in December 1997 after publicly reciting a poem which included the lines "The mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets and the faithful our soldiers." Charged with violating secularist law and inciting religious hatred, he was forced to step down as mayor and barred from public office, and ultimately wound up serving four months in prison in 1999. And also ordered the military to crush peaceful demonstrations at Istanbul's Gezi Park (3).

Erdogan became the AKP's candidate in Turkey's first direct election for the presidency, and was inaugurated on August 28, 2014. Although the role had previously been more of a ceremonial one, Erdogan indicated his intention to establish new powers as president (4). His goal was temporarily impeded when the AKP failed to garner a majority in the 2015 parliamentary elections, but after attempts to form a coalition government faltered, the AKP regained the majority in an election that November.

Mounting unrest boiled over in the form of an attempted military coup on the night of July 15, 2016. Erdogan, who was vacationing with his family (5), narrowly avoided trouble when his hotel was raided, and successfully escaped to . Out of harm's way, he took to the video chat app FaceTime to implore his countrymen to fight the renegade military units. He was largely supported by key government officials and influential figures, and within a few hours the coup, which resulted in more than 400 deaths and another 1,400 people injured, had been quashed.

      1.       Past Tenses (1)

      2.       Invinitive (2)

      3.       Invinitive (3)

      4.       Reflexive Pronouns (4)

      5.       Personal Pronouns (5)