Since 1961, Turkey has signed 19 IMF loan accords. Erdoğan’s government satisfied the budgetary and market requirements of the two during his administration and received every loan installment, the only time any Turkish government has done so. Erdoğan inherited a debt of $23.5 billion to the IMF, which was reduced to $0.9 billion in 2012. He decided not to sign a new deal. Turkey’s debt to the IMF was thus declared to be completely paid and he announced that the IMF could borrow from Turkey. In 2010, five-year credit default swaps for Turkey’s sovereign debt were trading at a record low of 1.17%, below those of nine EU member countries and Russia. In 2002, the Turkish Central Bank had $26.5 billion in reserves. This amount reached $92.2 billion in 2011. During Erdoğan’s leadership, inflation fell from 32% to 9.0% in 2004. Since then, Turkish inflation has continued to fluctuate around 9% and is still one of the highest inflation rates in the world. The Turkish public debt as a percentage of annual GDP declined from 74% in 2002 to 39% in 2009. In 2012, Turkey had a lower ratio of public debt to GDP than 21 of 27 members of the European Union and a lower budget deficit to GDP ratio than 23 of them.

Erdoğan graduated from Kasımpaşa Piyale primary school in 1965, and İmam Hatip school, a religious vocational high school, in 1973. The same educational path was followed by other co-founders of the AKP party. One quarter of the curriculum of İmam Hatip schools involves study of the Qurʼān, the life of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, and the Arabic language. Erdoğan studied the Qurʼān at an İmam Hatip, where his classmates began calling him “hoca” (“Muslim teacher”).

In 1976, Erdoğan engaged in politics by joining the National Turkish Student Union, an anti-communist action group. In the same year, he became the head of the Beyoğlu youth branch of the Islamist National Salvation Party (MSP), and was later promoted to chair of the Istanbul youth branch of the party.

Erdoğan married Emine Gülbaran (b. 1955, Siirt) on 4 July 1978. They have two sons, Ahmet Burak and Necmettin Bilal, and two daughters, Esra and Sümeyye. His father, Ahmet Erdoğan, died in 1988 and his mother, Tenzile Erdoğan, died in 2011 at the age of 88.

In 1983, Erdoğan followed most of Necmettin Erbakan’s followers into the Islamist Welfare Party. He became the party’s Beyoğlu district chair in 1984, and in 1985 he became the chair of the Istanbul city branch. He was elected to parliament in 1991, but was barred from taking his seat.

In December 1997 in Siirt, Erdoğan recited a poem from a work written by Ziya Gökalp, a pan-Turkish activist of the early 20th century. His recitation included verses translated as “The mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets and the faithful our soldiers….” which are not in the original version of the poem. Erdoğan said the poem had been approved by the education ministry to be published in textbooks. Under article 312/2 of the Turkish penal code his recitation was regarded as an incitement to violence and religious or racial hatred. He was given a ten-month prison sentence of which he served four months, from 24 March 1999 to 27 July 1999. Due to his conviction, Erdoğan was forced to give up his mayoral position. The conviction also stipulated a political ban, which prevented him from participating in parliamentary elections. He had appealed for the sentence to be converted to a monetary fine, but it was reduced to 120 days instead. In 2017, this period of Erdoğan’s life was made into a film titled Reis.

In 1998, the fundamentalist Welfare Party was declared unconstitutional on the grounds of threatening the secularism of Turkey and was shut down by the Turkish constitutional court. Erdoğan became a prominent speaker at demonstrations held by his party colleagues.

When the Virtue Party was also banned in 2001, a definitive split took place: the followers of Necmettin Erbakan founded the Felicity Party (SP) and the reformers founded the Justice and Development Party (AKP) under the leadership of Abdullah Gül and Erdoğan. The pro-reform politicians realized that a strictly Islamic party would never be accepted as a governing party by the state apparatus and they believed that an Islamic party did not appeal to more than about 20 percent of the Turkish electorate. The AK party emphatically placed itself as a broad democratic conservative party with new politicians from the political center (like Ali Babacan and Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu), while respecting Islamic norms and values, but without an explicit religious program. This turned out to be successful as the new party won 34% of the vote in the general elections of 2002. Erdoğan became prime minister in March 2003 after the Gül government ended his political ban.

The elections of 2002 were the first elections in which Erdoğan participated as a party leader. All parties previously elected to parliament failed to win enough votes to re-enter the parliament. The AKP won 34.3% of the national vote and formed the new government. Turkish stocks rose more than 7% on Monday morning. Politicians of the previous generation, such as Ecevit, Bahceli, Yılmaz and Çiller, resigned. The second largest party, the CHP, received 19.4% of the votes. The AKP won a landslide victory in the parliament, taking nearly two-thirds of the seats. Erdoğan could not become Prime Minister as he was still banned from politics by the judiciary for his speech in Siirt. Gül 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 9 February 2003. By this time, party leader Erdoğan was able to run for parliament due to a legal change made possible by the opposition Republican People’s Party. The AKP duly listed Erdoğan as a candidate for the rescheduled election, which he won, becoming Prime Minister after Gül handed over the post.

In 2002, Erdoğan inherited a Turkish economy that was beginning to recover from a recession as a result of reforms implemented by Kemal Derviş. Erdoğan supported Finance Minister Ali Babacan in enforcing macro-economic policies. Erdoğan tried to attract more foreign investors to Turkey and lifted many government regulations. The cash-flow into the Turkish economy between 2002 and 2012 caused a growth of 64% in real GDP and a 43% increase in GDP per capita; considerably higher numbers were commonly advertised but these did not account for the inflation of the US dollar between 2002 and 2012. The average annual growth in GDP per capita was 3.6%. The growth in real GDP between 2002 and 2012 was higher than the values from developed countries, but was close to average when developing countries are also taken into account. The ranking of the Turkish economy in terms of GDP moved slightly from 17 to 16 during this decade. A major consequence of the policies between 2002 and 2012 was the widening of the current account deficit from US$600 million to US$58 billion (2013 est.)

Erdoğan increased the budget of the Ministry of Education from 7.5 billion lira in 2002 to 34 billion lira in 2011, the highest share of the national budget given to one ministry. Before his prime ministership the military received the highest share of the national budget. Compulsory education was increased from eight years to twelve. In 2003, the Turkish government, together with UNICEF, initiated a campaign called “Come on girls, [let’s go] to school!” (Turkish: Haydi Kızlar Okula!). The goal of this campaign was to close the gender gap in primary school enrollment through the provision of a quality basic education for all girls, especially in southeast Turkey.

Bilateral trade between Turkey and China increased from $1 billion a year in 2002 to $27 billion annually in 2017. Erdoğan has stated that Turkey might consider joining the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation instead of the European Union.

In 2002, Erdoğan said that “homosexuals must be legally protected within the framework of their rights and freedoms. From time to time, we do not find the treatment they get on some television screens humane”, he said. However, in 2017 Erdoğan has said that empowering LGBT people in Turkey was “against the values of our nation”.

In 2003, Erdoğan’s government pushed through the Labor Act, a comprehensive reform of Turkey’s labor laws. The law greatly expanded the rights of employees, establishing a 45-hour workweek and limiting overtime work to 270 hours a year, provided legal protection against discrimination due to sex, religion, or political affiliation, prohibited discrimination between permanent and temporary workers, entitled employees terminated without “valid cause” to compensation, and mandated written contracts for employment arrangements lasting a year or more.

After assuming power in 2003, Erdoğan’s government embarked on a sweeping reform program of the Turkish healthcare system, called the Health Transformation Program (HTP), to greatly increase the quality of healthcare and protect all citizens from financial risks. Its introduction coincided with the period of sustained economic growth, allowing the Turkish government to put greater investments into the healthcare system. As part of the reforms, the “Green Card” program, which provides health benefits to the poor, was expanded in 2004. The reform program aimed at increasing the ratio of private to state-run healthcare, which, along with long queues in state-run hospitals, resulted in the rise of private medical care in Turkey, forcing state-run hospitals to compete by increasing quality.

Turkey under Erdoğan was named by the Bush Administration as a part of the “coalition of the willing” that was central to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. On 1 March 2003, a motion allowing Turkish military to participate in the U.S-led coalition’s invasion of Iraq, along with the permission for foreign troops to be stationed in Turkey for this purpose, was overruled by the Turkish Parliament.

Both cases were marred by irregularities and were condemned as a joint attempt by Erdoğan and Gülen to curb opposition to the AKP. The original Sledgehammer document containing the coup plans, allegedly written in 2003, was found to have been written using Microsoft Word 2007. Despite both domestic and international calls for these irregularities to be addressed in order to guarantee a fair trial, Erdoğan instead praised his government for bringing the coup plots to light. When Gülen publicly withdrew support and openly attacked Erdoğan in late 2013, several imprisoned military officers and journalists were released, with the government admitting that the judicial proceedings were unfair.

Relations between Greece and Turkey were normalized during Erdoğan’s tenure as prime minister. In May 2004, Erdoğan became the first Turkish Prime Minister to visit Greece since 1988, and the first to visit the Turkish minority of Thrace since 1952. In 2007, Erdoğan and Greek Prime Minister Kostas Karamanlis inaugurated the Greek-Turkish natural gas pipeline giving Caspian gas its first direct Western outlet. Turkey and Greece signed an agreement to create a Combined Joint Operational Unit within the framework of NATO to participate in Peace Support Operations. Erdoğan and his party strongly supported the EU-backed referendum to reunify Cyprus in 2004. Negotiations about a possible EU membership came to a standstill in 2009 and 2010, when Turkish ports were closed to Cypriot ships as a consequence of the economic isolation of the internationally unrecognized Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus and the failure of the EU to end the isolation, as it had promised in 2004. The Turkish government continues its refusal to recognize the Republic of Cyprus.

In December 2004, President Putin visited Turkey, making it the first presidential visit in the history of Turkish-Russian relations besides that of the Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, Nikolai Podgorny in 1972. In November 2005, Putin attended the inauguration of a jointly constructed Blue Stream natural gas pipeline in Turkey. This sequence of top-level visits has brought several important bilateral issues to the forefront. The two countries consider it their strategic goal to achieve “multidimensional co-operation”, especially in the fields of energy, transport and the military. Specifically, Russia aims to invest in Turkey’s fuel and energy industries, and it also expects to participate in tenders for the modernisation of Turkey’s military. The relations during this time is described by President Medvedev as “Turkey is one of our most important partners with respect to regional and international issues. We can confidently say that Russian-Turkish relations have advanced to the level of a multidimensional strategic partnership”.

During Erdoğan’s term of office, diplomatic relations between Turkey and Syria significantly deteriorated. In 2004, President Bashar al-Assad arrived in Turkey for the first official visit by a Syrian President in 57 years. In late 2004, Erdoğan signed a free trade agreement with Syria. Visa restrictions between the two countries were lifted in 2009, which caused an economic boom in the regions near the Syrian border. However, in 2011 the relationship between the two countries was strained following the outbreak of conflict in Syria. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said he was trying to “cultivate a favorable relationship with whatever government would take the place of Assad”. However, he began to support the opposition in Syria, after demonstrations turned violent, creating a serious Syrian refugee problem in Turkey. Erdoğan’s policy of providing military training for anti-Damascus fighters has also created conflict with Syria’s ally and a neighbour of Turkey, Iran.

Prime Minister Erdoğan expressed multiple times that Turkey would acknowledge the mass killings of up to 1.5 million Armenians during World War I as genocide only after a thorough investigation by a joint Turkish-Armenian commission consisting of historians, archaeologists, political scientists and other experts. In 2005, Erdoğan and the main opposition party leader Deniz Baykal wrote a letter to Armenian President Robert Kocharian, proposing the creation of a joint Turkish-Armenian commission. Armenian Foreign Minister Vartan Oskanian rejected the offer because he asserted that the proposal itself was “insincere and not serious”. He added: “This issue cannot be considered at historical level with Turks, who themselves politicized the problem”.

In 2005, the parliament granted amnesty to students expelled from universities before 2003. The amnesty applied to students dismissed on academic or disciplinary grounds. In 2004, textbooks became free of charge and since 2008 every province in Turkey has its own university. During Erdoğan’s Premiership, the number of universities in Turkey nearly doubled, from 98 in 2002 to 186 in October 2012.

When Erdoğan came to power, he continued Turkey’s long ambition of joining the European Union. On 3 October 2005 negotiations began for Turkey’s accession to the European Union. Erdoğan was named “The European of the Year 2004” by the newspaper European Voice for the reforms in his country in order to accomplish the accession of Turkey to the European Union. He said in a comment that “Turkey’s accession shows that Europe is a continent where civilisations reconcile and not clash.” On 3 October 2005, the negotiations for Turkey’s accession to the EU formally started during Erdoğan’s tenure as Prime Minister.

Erdoğan visited Israel on 1 May 2005, a gesture unusual for a leader of a Muslim majority country. During his trip, Erdoğan visited the Yad Vashem, Israel’s official memorial to the victims of the Holocaust. The President of Israel Shimon Peres addressed the Turkish parliament during a visit in 2007, the first time an Israeli leader had addressed the legislature of a predominantly Muslim nation.

In March 2006, the Supreme Board of Judges and Prosecutors (HSYK) held a press conference to publicly protest the obstruction of the appointment of judges to the high courts for over 10 months. The HSYK said Erdoğan wanted to fill the vacant posts with his own appointees. Erdoğan was accused of creating a rift with Turkey’s highest court of appeal, the Yargıtay, and high administrative court, the Danıştay. Erdoğan stated that the constitution gave the power to assign these posts to his elected party.

In April 2006, Erdoğan unveiled a social security reform package demanded by the International Monetary Fund under a loan deal. The move, which Erdoğan called one of the most radical reforms ever, was passed with fierce opposition. Turkey’s three social security bodies were united under one roof, bringing equal health services and retirement benefits for members of all three bodies. The previous system had been criticized for reserving the best healthcare for civil servants and relegating others to wait in long queues. Under the second bill, everyone under the age of 18 years was entitled to free health services, irrespective of whether they pay premiums to any social security organization. The bill also envisages a gradual increase in the retirement age: starting from 2036, the retirement age will increase to 65 by 2048 for both women and men.

In August 2006, King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz as-Saud made a visit to Turkey. This was the first visit by a Saudi monarch to Turkey in the last four decades. The monarch made a second visit, on 9 November 2007. Turk-Saudi trade volume has exceeded US$ 3.2 billion in 2006, almost double the figure achieved in 2003. In 2009, this amount reached US$ 5.5 billion and the goal for the year 2010 was US$ 10 billion.

On 14 April 2007, an estimated 300,000 people marched in Ankara to protest against the possible candidacy of Erdoğan in the 2007 presidential election, afraid that if elected as president, he would alter the secular nature of the Turkish state. Erdoğan announced on 24 April 2007 that the party had nominated Abdullah Gül as the AKP candidate in the presidential election. The protests continued over the next several weeks, with over one million people reported to have turned out at a 29 April rally in Istanbul, tens of thousands at separate protests on 4 May in Manisa and Çanakkale, and one million in İzmir on 13 May.

The stage of the elections of 2007 was set for a fight for legitimacy in the eyes of voters between his government and the CHP. Erdoğan used the event that took place during the ill-fated Presidential elections a few months earlier as a part of the general election campaign of his party. On 22 July 2007, the AKP won an important victory over the opposition, garnering 46.7% of the popular vote. 22 July elections marked only the second time in the Republic of Turkey’s history whereby an incumbent governing party won an election by increasing its share of popular support. On 14 March 2008, Turkey’s Chief Prosecutor asked the country’s Constitutional Court to ban Erdoğan’s governing party. The party escaped a ban on 30 July 2008, a year after winning 46.7% of the vote in national elections, although judges did cut the party’s public funding by 50%.

In May 2007, the head of Turkey’s High Court asked prosecutors to consider whether Erdoğan should be charged over critical comments regarding the election of Abdullah Gül as president. Erdoğan said the ruling was “a disgrace to the justice system”, and criticized the Constitutional Court which had invalidated a presidential vote because a boycott by other parties meant there was no quorum. Prosecutors investigated his earlier comments, including saying it had fired a “bullet at democracy”. Tülay Tuğcu, head of the Constitutional Court, condemned Erdoğan for “threats, insults and hostility” towards the justice system.

The most significant issue that caused deep fissures between the army and the government was the midnight e-memorandum posted on the military’s website objecting to the selection of Foreign Minister Abdullah Gül as the ruling party’s candidate for the Presidency in 2007. The military argued that the election of Gül, whose wife wears an Islamic headscarf, could undermine the laicistic order of the country. Contrary to expectations, the government responded harshly to former Chief of General Staff Gen. Yaşar Büyükanıt’s e-memorandum, stating the military had nothing to do with the selection of the presidential candidate.

In December 2008, Erdoğan criticised the I Apologize campaign by Turkish intellectuals to recognize the Armenian Genocide, saying, “I neither accept nor support this campaign. We did not commit a crime, therefore we do not need to apologise … It will not have any benefit other than stirring up trouble, disturbing our peace and undoing the steps which have been taken”. In November 2009, he said, “it is not possible for those who belong to the Muslim faith to carry out genocide”.

In January 2008, the Turkish Parliament adopted a law to prohibit smoking in most public places. Erdoğan is outspokenly anti-smoking.

Erdoğan made a speech after the announcement and used the ‘Erdoğan logo’ for the first time. The logo was criticised because it was very similar to the logo that U.S. President Barack Obama used in the 2008 presidential election.

In 2009, Prime Minister Erdoğan’s government announced a plan to help end the quarter-century-long Turkey–Kurdistan Workers’ Party conflict that had cost more than 40,000 lives. The government’s plan, supported by the European Union, intended to allow the Kurdish language to be used in all broadcast media and political campaigns, and restored Kurdish names to cities and towns that had been given Turkish ones. Erdoğan said, “We took a courageous step to resolve chronic issues that constitute an obstacle along Turkey’s development, progression and empowerment”. Erdoğan passed a partial amnesty to reduce penalties faced by many members of the Kurdish guerrilla movement PKK who had surrendered to the government. On 23 November 2011, during a televised meeting of his party in Ankara, he apologised on behalf of the state for the Dersim massacre, where many Alevis and Zazas were killed. In 2013 the government of Erdoğan began a peace process between the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and the Turkish Government, mediated by parliamentarians of the Peoples’ Democratic party (HDP). In 2015 he decided that the peace process was over and supported the lift of the parliamentary immunity of the HDP parliamentarians.

Turkish foreign policy during Erdoğan’s tenure as prime minister has been associated with the name of Ahmet Davutoğlu. Davutoğlu was the chief foreign policy advisor of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan before he was appointed foreign minister in 2009. The basis of Erdoğan’s foreign policy is based on the principle of “don’t make enemies, make friends” and the pursuit of “zero problems” with neighboring countries.

The European Commission generally supports Erdoğan’s reforms, but remains critical of his policies. Negotiations about a possible EU membership came to a standstill in 2009 and 2010, when Turkish ports were closed to Cypriot ships. The Turkish government continues its refusal to recognize EU member state Cyprus.

When Barack Obama became President of United States, he made his first overseas bilateral meeting to Turkey in April 2009.

In 2009, Turkish sculptor Mehmet Aksoy created the Statue of Humanity in Kars to promote reconciliation between Turkey and Armenia. When visiting the city in 2011, Erdoğan deemed the statue a “freak”, and months later it was demolished. Aksoy sued Erdoğan for “moral indemnities”, although his lawyer said that his statement was a critique rather than an insult. In March 2015, a judge ordered Erdoğan to pay 10,000 liras.

In May 2010, Turkey and Russia signed 17 agreements to enhance cooperation in energy and other fields, including pacts to build Turkey’s first nuclear power plant and further plans for an oil pipeline from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean Sea. The leaders of both countries also signed an agreement on visa-free travel, enabling tourists to get into the country for free and stay there for up to 30 days.

Tensions increased further following the Gaza flotilla raid in May 2010. Erdoğan strongly condemned the raid, describing it as “state terrorism”, and demanded an Israeli apology. In February 2013, Erdoğan called Zionism a “crime against humanity”, comparing it to Islamophobia, antisemitism, and fascism. He later retracted the statement, saying he had been misinterpreted. He said “everyone should know” that his comments were directed at “Israeli policies”, especially as regards to “Gaza and the settlements.” Erdoğan’s statements were criticized by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, among others. In August 2013, the Hürriyet reported that Erdoğan had claimed to have evidence of Israel’s responsibility for the removal of Morsi from office in Egypt. The Israeli and Egyptian governments dismissed the suggestion.

In May 2010, the Turkish and Somali governments signed a military training agreement, in keeping with the provisions outlined in the Djibouti Peace Process. Turkish Airlines became the first long-distance international commercial airline in two decades to resume flights to and from Mogadishu’s Aden Adde International Airport. Turkey also launched various development and infrastructure projects in Somalia including building several hospitals and helping renovate the National Assembly building.

In 2011, Erdogan was diagnosed with colon cancer, for which he underwent treatment and surgery.

In 2011, Erdoğan ordered the tearing-down of the Statue of Humanity, a Turkish–Armenian friendship monument in Kars, which was commissioned in 2006 and represented a metaphor of the rapprochement of the two countries after many years of dispute over the events of 1915. Erdoğan justified the removal by stating that the monument was offensively close to the tomb of an 11th-century Islamic scholar, and that its shadow ruined the view of that site, while Kars municipality officials said it was illegally erected in a protected area. However, the former mayor of Kars who approved the original construction of the monument said the municipality was destroying not just a “monument to humanity” but “humanity itself”. The demolition was not unopposed; among its detractors were several Turkish artists. Two of them, the painter Bedri Baykam and his associate, Pyramid Art Gallery general coordinator Tugba Kurtulmus, were stabbed after a meeting with other artists at the Istanbul Akatlar cultural center.

In 2011, Erdoğan’s government made legal reforms to return properties of Christian and Jewish minorities which were seized by the Turkish government in the 1930s. The total value of the properties returned reached $2 billion (USD).

Erdoğan had made his first official visit to Egypt on 12 September 2011, accompanied by six ministers and 200 businessmen. This visit was made very soon after Turkey had ejected Israeli ambassadors, cutting off all diplomatic relations with Israel because Israel refused to apologize for the Gaza flotilla raid which killed eight Turkish and one Turco-American.

Erdoğan stated in a 2011 interview that he supported secularism for Egypt, which generated an angry reaction among Islamic movements, especially the Freedom and Justice party – the political wing of the Muslim Brotherhood. However, commentators suggest that by forming an alliance with the military junta during Egypt’s transition to democracy, Erdoğan may have tipped the balance in favor of an authoritarian government.

Reporters Without Borders observed a continuous decrease in Freedom of the Press during Erdoğan’s later terms, with a rank of around 100 on the Press Freedom Index during his first term and a rank of 154 out of a total of 179 countries in 2013. Freedom House saw a slight recovery in later years and awarded Turkey a Press Freedom Score of 55/100 in 2012 after a low point of 48/100 in 2006.

Erdoğan condemned Egypt’s Rabaa massacre, which took place on 14 August 2013, when Egyptian security forces killed over 1000 people during the violent dispersal of mass anti-government sit-ins at Cairo’s Rabaa al-Adawiya and al-Nahda squares. In July 2014, one year after the removal of Mohammed Morsi from office, Erdoğan described Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi as an “illegitimate tyrant”.

2013 Gezi Park protests against the perceived authoritarianism of Erdoğan and his policies, starting from a small sit-in in Istanbul in defense of a city park. After the police’s intense reaction with tear gas, the protests grew each day. Faced by the largest mass protest in a decade, Erdoğan made this controversial remark in a televised speech: “The police were there yesterday, they are there today, and they will be there tomorrow”. After weeks of clashes in the streets of Istanbul, his government at first apologized to the protestors and called for a plebiscite, but then ordered a crackdown on the protesters.

When Gülen withdrew support from the AKP government in late 2013, a government corruption scandal broke out, leading to the arrest of several family members of cabinet ministers. Erdoğan accused Gülen of co-ordinating a “parallel state” within the judiciary in an attempt to topple him from power. He then removed or reassigned several judicial officials in an attempt to remove Gülen’s supporters from office. Erdoğan’s ‘purge’ was widely questioned and criticised by the European Union. In early 2014, a new law was passed by parliament giving the government greater control over the judiciary, which sparked public protest throughout the country. International organisations perceived the law to be a danger to the separation of powers.

On 23 April 2014, Erdoğan’s office issued a statement in nine languages (including two dialects of Armenian), offering condolences for the mass killings of Armenians and stating that the events of 1915 had inhumane consequences. The statement described the mass killings as the two nations’ shared pain and said: “Having experienced events which had inhumane consequences – such as relocation – during the First World War, (it) should not prevent Turks and Armenians from establishing compassion and mutually humane attitudes among one another”. The Ottoman Parliament of 1915 had previously used the term “relocation” to describe the purpose of the Tehcir Law, which resulted in the deaths of anywhere between 800,000 and over 1,800,000 Armenian civilians in what is commonly referred to as the Armenian Genocide.

Erdoğan took the oath of office on 28 August 2014 and became the 12th president of Turkey. He administered the new Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu’s oath on 29 August. When asked about his lower-than-expected 51.79% share of the vote, he allegedly responded, “there were even those who did not like the Prophet. I, however, won 52%”. Assuming the role of President, Erdoğan was criticized for openly stating that he would not maintain the tradition of presidential neutrality. Erdoğan has also stated his intention to pursue a more active role as president, such as utilising the President’s rarely used cabinet-calling powers. The political opposition has argued that Erdoğan will continue to pursue his own political agenda, controlling the government, while his new Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu would be docile and submissive. Furthermore, the domination of loyal Erdoğan supporters in Davutoğlu’s cabinet fuelled speculation that Erdoğan intended to exercise substantial control over the government.

On 1 July 2014, Erdoğan was named the AKP’s presidential candidate in the Turkish presidential election. His candidacy was announced by the Deputy President of the AKP, Mehmet Ali Şahin.

On 29 October 2014, Erdoğan was due to hold a Republic Day reception in the new palace to commemorate the 91st anniversary of the Republic of Turkey and to officially inaugurate the Presidential Palace. However, after most invited participants announced that they would boycott the event and a mining accident occurred in the district of Ermenek in Karaman, the reception was cancelled.

Erdoğan has served as the de facto leader of Turkey since 2002. In response to criticism, Erdoğan made a speech in May 2014 denouncing allegations of dictatorship, saying that the leader of the opposition, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, who was there at the speech, would not be able to “roam the streets” freely if he were a dictator. Kılıçdaroğlu responded that political tensions would cease to exist if Erdoğan stopped making his polarising speeches for three days. One observer said it was a measure of the state of Turkish democracy that Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu could openly threaten, on 20 December 2015, that, if his party did not win the election, Turkish Kurds would endure a repeat of the era of the “white Toros”, the Turkish name for the Renault 12, “a car associated with the gendarmarie’s fearsome intelligence agents, who carried out thousands of extrajudicial executions of Kurdish nationalists during the 1990s”. In February 2015, a 13-year-old was testified by a prosecutor after allegedly insulting Erdoğan on Facebook. In 2016, a waiter was arrested for insulting Erdoğan by allegedly saying “If Erdoğan comes here, I will not even serve tea to him.”.

In April 2014, the President of the Constitutional Court, Haşim Kılıç, accused Erdoğan of damaging the credibility of the judiciary, labelling Erdoğan’s attempts to increase political control over the courts as ‘desperate’. During the chaotic 2007 presidential election, the military issued an E-memorandum warning the government to keep within the boundaries of secularism when choosing a candidate. Regardless, Erdoğan’s close relations with Fethullah Gülen and his Cemaat Movement allowed his government to maintain a degree of influence within the judiciary through Gülen’s supporters in high judicial and bureaucratic offices. Shortly after, an alleged coup plot codenamed Sledgehammer became public and resulted in the imprisonment of 300 military officers including İbrahim Fırtına, Çetin Doğan and Engin Alan. Several opposition politicians, journalists and military officers also went on trial for allegedly being part of an ultra-nationalist organisation called Ergenekon.

Several judicial officials removed from their posts said that they had been removed due to their secularist credentials. The political opposition accused Erdoğan of not only attempting to remove Gülen supporters, but supporters of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’s principles as well, in order to pave the way for increased politicisation of the judiciary. Several family members of Erdoğan’s ministers who had been arrested as a result of the 2013 corruption scandal were released, and a judicial order to question Erdoğan’s son Bilal Erdoğan was annulled. Controversy erupted when it emerged that many of the newly appointed judicial officials were actually AKP supporters. İslam Çiçek, a judge who ejected the cases of five ministers’ relatives accused of corruption, was accused of being an AKP supporter and an official investigation was launched into his political affiliations. On 1 September 2014, the courts dissolved the cases of 96 suspects, which included Bilal Erdoğan.

Erdoğan also tightened controls over the Internet, signing into law a bill which allows the government to block websites without prior court order on 12 September 2014. His government blocked Twitter and YouTube in late March 2014 following the release of a recording of a conversation between him and his son Bilal, where Erdoğan allegedly warned his family to ‘nullify’ all cash reserves at their home amid the 2013 corruption scandal. Erdoğan has undertaken a media campaign that attempts to portray the presidential family as frugal and simple-living; their palace electricity-bill is estimated at $500,000 per month.

Erdoğan spent his early childhood in Rize, where his father was a captain in the Turkish Coast Guard. His summer holidays were mostly spent in Güneysu, Rize, where his family originates. Throughout his life he often returned to this spiritual home, and in 2015 he opened a vast mosque on a mountaintop near this village. The family returned to Istanbul when Erdoğan was 13 years old.

Pope Francis in April 2015, at a special mass in St. Peter’s Basilica marking the centenary of the events, described atrocities against Armenian civilians in 1915–1922 as “the first genocide of the 20th century”. In protest, Erdoğan recalled the Turkish ambassador from the Vatican, and summoned the Vatican’s ambassador, to express “disappointment” at what he called a discriminatory message. He later stated “we don’t carry a stain or a shadow like genocide”. US President Barack Obama called for a “full, frank and just acknowledgement of the facts”, but again stopped short of labelling it “genocide”, despite his campaign promise to do so.

In 2015, there were consistent allegations that Erdoğan maintained financial links with the Islamic State, including allegation of his son-in-law Berat Albayrak’s involvement with oil production and smuggling in ISIL. Revelations that the state was supplying arms to militant groups in Syria in the 2014 National Intelligence Organisation lorry scandal led to accusations of high treason. In July 2015, Turkey became involved in the international military intervention against ISIL, simultaneously launching airstrikes against PKK bases in Iraqi Kurdistan.

As of 2015, Turkey began openly supporting the Army of Conquest, a coalition of Syrian rebel groups that included al-Nusra Front and Ahrar al-Sham. In late November 2016, Erdoğan said that the Turkish military launched its operations in Syria to end Assad’s rule, but retracted this statement shortly afterwards.

As President, Erdoğan has overseen a revival of Ottoman tradition, greeting Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas with an Ottoman-style ceremony in the new presidential palace, with guards dressed in costumes representing founders of 16 Great Turkish Empires in history. While serving as the Prime Minister of Turkey, Erdoğan’s AKP made references to the Ottoman era during election campaigns, such as calling their supporters ‘grandsons of Ottomans’ (Osmanlı torunu). This proved controversial, since it was perceived to be an open attack against the republican nature of modern Turkey founded by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. In 2015, Erdoğan made a statement in which he endorsed the old Ottoman term külliye to refer to university campuses rather than the standard Turkish word kampüs. Many critics have thus accused Erdoğan of wanting to become an Ottoman sultan and abandon the secular and democratic credentials of the Republic. When pressed on this issue in January 2015, Erdoğan denied these claims and said that he would aim to be more like Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom rather than like an Ottoman sultan.

In 2015, 74 US senators sent a letter to US Secretary of State, John Kerry, to state their concern over what they saw as deviations from the basic principles of democracy in Turkey and oppressions of Erdoğan over media.

President Erdoğan and his government continue to press for court action against the remaining free press in Turkey. The latest newspaper that has been seized is Zaman, in March 2016. After the seizure Morton Abramowitz and Eric Edelman, former U.S. ambassadors to Turkey, condemned President Erdoğan’s actions in an opinion piece published by The Washington Post: “Clearly, democracy cannot flourish under Erdoğan now”. “The overall pace of reforms in Turkey has not only slowed down but in some key areas, such as freedom of expression and the independence of the judiciary, there has been a regression, which is particularly worrying”, rapporteur Kati Piri said in April 2016 after the European Parliament passed its annual progress report on Turkey.

On 22 June 2016, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said that he considered himself successful in “destroying” Turkish civil groups “working against the state”, a conclusion that had been confirmed some days earlier by Sedat Laçiner, Professor of International Relations and rector of the Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University: “Outlawing unarmed and peaceful opposition, sentencing people to unfair punishment under erroneous terror accusations, will feed genuine terrorism in Erdoğan’s Turkey. Guns and violence will become the sole alternative for legally expressing free thought”.

After the coup attempt, over 200 journalists were arrested and over 120 media outlets were closed. Cumhuriyet journalists were detained in November 2016 after a long-standing crackdown on the newspaper. Subsequently, Reporters Without Borders called Erdoğan an “enemy of press freedom” and said that he “hides his aggressive dictatorship under a veneer of democracy”.

On 20 July 2016, President Erdoğan declared the state of emergency, citing the coup d’état attempt as justification. It was first scheduled to last three months. The Turkish parliament approved this measure. The state of emergency was later extended for another three months, amidst the ongoing 2016 Turkish purges including comprehensive purges of independent media and detention of tens of thousands of Turkish citizens politically opposed to Erdoğan. More than 50,000 people have been arrested and over 160,000 fired from their jobs by March 2018.

In August 2016, Erdoğan began rounding up journalists who had been publishing, or who were about to publish articles questioning corruption within the Erdoğan administration, and incarcerating them. The number of Turkish journalists jailed by Turkey is higher than any other country, including all of those journalists currently jailed in North Korea, Cuba, Russia, and China combined. In the wake of the coup attempt of July 2016 the Erdoğan administration began rounding up tens of thousands of individuals, both from within the government, and from the public sector, and incarcerating them on charges of alleged “terrorism”. As a result of these arrests, many in the international community complained about the lack of proper judicial process in the incarceration of Erdoğan’s opposition.

In January 2016, more than a thousand academics signed a petition criticizing Turkey’s military crackdown on ethnic Kurdish towns and neighborhoods in the east of the country, such as Sur (a district of Diyarbakır), Silvan, Nusaybin, Cizre and Silopi, and asking an end to violence. Erdoğan accused those who signed the petition of “terrorist propaganda”, calling them “the darkest of people”. He called for action by institutions and universities, stating, “Everyone who benefits from this state but is now an enemy of the state must be punished without further delay”. Within days, over 30 of the signatories were arrested, many in dawn-time raids on their homes. Although all were quickly released, nearly half were fired from their jobs, eliciting a denunciation from Turkey’s Science Academy for such “wrong and disturbing” treatment. Erdoğan vowed that the academics would pay the price for “falling into a pit of treachery”.

In February 2016 Erdoğan threatened to send the millions of refugees in Turkey to EU member states, saying: “We can open the doors to Greece and Bulgaria anytime and we can put the refugees on buses … So how will you deal with refugees if you don’t get a deal?”

On 20 August 2016 Erdoğan told his Ukrainian counterpart Petro Poroshenko that Turkey would not recognize the 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea; calling it “Crimea’s occupation”.

On 15 July 2016, a coup d’état was attempted by the military, with aims to remove Erdoğan from government. By the next day, Erdoğan’s government managed to reassert effective control in the country. Reportedly, no government official was arrested or harmed, which, among other factors, raised the suspicion of a false flag event staged by the government itself.

In May 2016, former Miss Turkey model Merve Büyüksaraç was sentenced to more than a year in prison for allegedly insulting the president. In a 2016 news story, Bloomberg reported, “more than 2,000 cases have been opened against journalists, cartoonists, teachers, a former Miss Turkey, and even schoolchildren in the past two years”.

In November 2016, the Turkish government blocked access to social media in all of Turkey as well as sought to completely block Internet access for the citizens in the southeast of the country.

In June 2017 a draft proposal by the ministry of education was approved by Erdoğan, in which the curriculum for schools excluded the teaching of the theory of evolution of Charles Darwin by 2019. From then on the teaching will be postponed and start at undergraduate level.

In April 2017, a constitutional referendum was held, where the voters in Turkey (and Turkish citizens abroad) voted on a set of 18 proposed amendments to the Constitution of Turkey. The amendments include the replacement of the existing parliamentary system with a presidential system. The post of Prime Minister would be abolished, and the presidency would become an executive post vested with broad executive powers. The parliament seats would be increased from 550 to 600 and the age of candidacy to the parliament was lowered from 25 to 18. The referendum also called for changes to the Supreme Board of Judges and Prosecutors.

In April 2017, Turkey blocked all access to Wikipedia over a content dispute. The Turkish government lifted a two-and-a-half-year ban on Wikipedia on 15 January 2020, restoring access to the online encyclopedia a month after Turkey’s top court ruled that blocking Wikipedia was unconstitutional.

In April 2017 Erdoğan successfully sponsored legislation effectively making it illegal for the Turkish legislative branch to investigate his executive branch of government. Without the checks and balances of freedom of speech, and the freedom of the Turkish legislature to hold him accountable for his actions, many have likened Turkey’s current form of government to a dictatorship with only nominal forms of democracy in practice. At the time of Erdoğan’s successful passing of the most recent legislation silencing his opposition, United States President Donald Trump called Erdoğan to congratulate him for his “recent referendum victory”.

On 29 April 2017 Erdoğan’s administration began an internal Internet block of all of the Wikipedia online encyclopedia site via Turkey’s domestic Internet filtering system. This blocking action took place after the government had first made a request for Wikipedia to remove what it referred to as “offensive content”. In response, Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales replied via a post on Twitter stating, “Access to information is a fundamental human right. Turkish people, I will always stand with you and fight for this right.”

In January 2017, Erdoğan said that the withdrawal of Turkish troops from Northern Cyprus is “out of the question” and Turkey will be in Cyprus “forever”.

In March 2017, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan stated to the Turks in Europe “Make not three, but five children. Because you are the future of Europe. That will be the best response to the injustices against you.” This has been interpreted as an imperialist call for demographic warfare.

In December 2017, President Erdoğan issued a warning to Donald Trump, after the U.S. President acknowledged Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Erdoğan stated, “Jerusalem is a red line for Muslims”, indicating that naming Jerusalem as Israel’s capital would alienate Palestinians and other Muslims from the city, undermining hopes at a future capital of a Palestinian State. Erdoğan called Israel a “terrorist state”. Naftali Bennett dismissed the threats, claiming “Erdoğan does not miss an opportunity to attack Israel”.

In June 2017 during a speech, Erdoğan called the isolation of Qatar as “inhumane and against Islamic values” and that “victimising Qatar through smear campaigns serves no purpose”.

In September 2017, Erdoğan condemned the persecution of Muslims in Myanmar and accused Myanmar of “genocide” against the Muslim minority.

Taking advantage of the new low in U.S.-Turkish relations, Putin saw his chance to use an S-400 sale to Turkey, so in July 2017, he offered the air defense system to Turkey. In the months that followed, the United States warned Turkey that a S-400 purchase jeopardized Turkey’s F-35 purchase. Integration of the Russian system into the NATO air defense net was also out of the question. Administration officials, including Mark Esper, warned that Turkey had to choose between the S-400 and the F-35. That they couldn’t have both.

Relations with Venezuela were strengthened with recent developments and high level mutual visits. The first official visit between the two countries at presidential level was in October 2017 when Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro visited Turkey. In December 2018, Erdoğan visited Venezuela for the first time and expressed his will to build strong relations with Venezuela and expressed hope that high-level visits “will increasingly continue.”

The 2018 Turkish presidential election took place as part of the 2018 general election, alongside parliamentary elections on the same day. Following the approval of constitutional changes in a referendum held in 2017, the elected President will be both the head of state and head of government of Turkey, taking over the latter role from the to-be-abolished office of the Prime Minister.

Incumbent president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan declared his candidacy for the People’s Alliance (Turkish: Cumhur İttifakı) on 27 April 2018. Erdoğan’s main opposition, the Republican People’s Party, nominated Muharrem İnce, a member of the parliament known for his combative opposition and spirited speeches against Erdoğan. Besides these candidates, Meral Akşener, the founder and leader of İyi Party, Temel Karamollaoğlu, the leader of the Felicity Party and Doğu Perinçek, the leader of the Patriotic Party, have announced their candidacies and collected the 100,000 signatures required for nomination. The alliance which Erdoğan was candidate for won 52.59% of the popular vote.

On 8 July 2018, Erdoğan sacked 18,000 officials for alleged ties to US based cleric Fethullah Gülen, shortly before renewing his term as an executive president. Of those removed, 9000 were police officers with 5000 from the armed forces with the addition of hundreds of academics.

In February 2018, President Erdoğan expressed Turkish support of the Republic of Macedonia’s position during negotiations over the Macedonia naming dispute saying that Greece’s position is wrong.

In March 2018, President Erdoğan criticized the Kosovan Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj for dismissing his Interior Minister and Intelligence Chief for failing to inform him of an unauthorized and illegal secret operation conducted by the National Intelligence Organization of Turkey on Kosovo’s territory that led to the arrest of six people allegedly associated with the Gülen movement.

In May 2018, British Prime Minister Theresa May welcomed Erdoğan to the United Kingdom for a three-day state visit. Erdoğan declared that the United Kingdom is “an ally and a strategic partner, but also a real friend. The cooperation we have is well beyond any mechanism that we have established with other partners.”

In January 2018, the Turkish military and its Syrian National Army and Sham Legion allies began the Turkish military operation in Afrin in the Kurdish-majority Afrin Canton in Northern Syria, against the YPG. On 10 April, Erdoğan rejected a Russian demand to return Afrin to Syrian government control.

On 1 August 2018, the U.S. Department of Treasury sanctioned two senior Turkish government ministers who were involved in the detention of American pastor Andrew Brunson. Erdoğan said that the U.S. behavior will force Turkey to look for new friends and allies. The U.S.–Turkey tensions appear to be the most serious diplomatic crisis between the NATO allies in years.

Reuters reported that in 2018 23 tons of mined gold were taken from Venezuela to Istanbul. In the first nine months of 2018, Venezuela’s gold exports to Turkey rose from zero in the previous year to US$900 million.

In the 2019 local elections, the ruling party AKP lost control of Istanbul and Ankara for the first time in 25 years, as well as 5 of Turkey’s 6 largest cities. The loss has been widely attributed to Erdoğan’s mismanagement of the Turkish economic crisis, rising authoritarianism as well as the alleged government inaction on the Syrian refugee crisis. Soon after the elections, Supreme Electoral Council of Turkey ordered a re-election in Istanbul, cancelling Ekrem İmamoğlu’s mayoral certificate. The decision led to a significant decrease of Erdoğan’s and AKP’s popularity and his party lost the elections again in June with a greater margin. The result was seen as a huge blow to Erdoğan, who had once said that if his party ‘lost Istanbul, we would lose Turkey.’ The opposition’s victory was characterised as ‘the beginning of the end’ for Erdoğan, with international commentators calling the re-run a huge government miscalculation that led to a potential İmamoğlu candidacy in the next scheduled presidential election. It is suspected that the scale of the government’s defeat could provoke a cabinet reshuffle and early general elections, currently scheduled for June 2023.

On 26 November 2019, an earthquake struck the Durrës region of Albania. President Erdoğan expressed his condolences. and citing close Albanian-Turkish relations, he committed Turkey to reconstructing 500 earthquake destroyed homes and other civic structures in Laç, Albania. In Istanbul, Erdoğan organised and attended a donors conference (8 December) to assist Albania that included Turkish businessmen, investors and Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama.

In April 2019, Erdoğan said the West Bank belongs to Palestinians, after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he would annex Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories if he is re-elected.

In October 2019, after Erdoğan spoke to him, U.S. President Donald Trump gave the go-ahead to the 2019 Turkish offensive into north-eastern Syria, despite recently agreeing to a Northern Syria Buffer Zone. U.S. troops in northern Syria were withdrawn from the border to avoid interference with the Turkish operation. After the U.S. pullout, Turkey proceeded to attack the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria. Rejecting criticism of the invasion, Erdoğan claimed that NATO and European Union countries “sided with terrorists, and all of them attacked us”.

Following the 2019 Venezuelan uprising attempt, Erdoğan condemned the actions of lawmaker Juan Guaidó, tweeting “Those who are in an effort to appoint a postmodern colonial governor to Venezuela, where the President was appointed by elections and where the people rule, should know that only democratic elections can determine how a country is governed”.

On 1 July 2020, in a statement made to his party members, Erdoğan announced that the government would introduce new measures and regulations to control or shut down social media platforms such as YouTube, Twitter and Netflix. Through these new measures, each company would be required to appoint an official representative in the country to respond to legal concerns. The decision comes after a number of Twitter users insulted his daughter Esra after she welcomed her fourth child.

In September 2020, Erdoğan declared his government’s support for Azerbaijan following clashes between Armenian and Azeri forces over a disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh. He dismissed demands for a ceasefire.

In August 2020, the former Vice President and presidential candidate Joe Biden called for a new U.S. approach to the “autocrat” President Erdoğan and support for Turkish opposition parties. In September 2020, Biden demanded that Erdoğan “stay out” of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia, in which Turkey has supported the Azeris.

In July 2020, after the Council of State annulled the Cabinet’s 1934 decision to establish the Hagia Sophia as museum and revoking the monument’s status, Erdoğan ordered its reclassification as a mosque. The 1934 decree was ruled to be unlawful under both Ottoman and Turkish law as Hagia Sophia’s waqf, endowed by Sultan Mehmed II, had designated the site a mosque; proponents of the decision argued the Hagia Sophia was the personal property of the sultan. This redesignation is controversial, invoking condemnation from the Turkish opposition, UNESCO, the World Council of Churches, the Holy See, and many other international leaders. In August 2020, he also signed the order that transferred the administration of the Chora Church to the Directorate of Religious Affairs to open it for worship as a mosque. Initially converted to a mosque by the Ottomans, the building had then been designated as a museum by the government since 1934.