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Who Is Recep Tayyip Erdogan?

Born in Istanbul, Turkey, in 1954, Recep Tayyip Erdogan became involved in politics while attending university. The first Islamist to be elected mayor of Istanbul, he reduced pollution and improved the city's infrastructure, but was imprisoned on charges of inciting religious hatred.Erdogan later served three terms as prime minister, during which time he markedly improved Turkey's economic standing, but drew criticism for perceived power grabs. He was voted the country's president in 2014, and after surviving an attempted military coup in July 2016, he earned reelection two years later.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan was born on February 26, 1954, in the Kasimpasa quarter of Istanbul, Turkey, to parents Ahmet and Tenzile Erdogan. He spent part of his childhood in Rize, where his father worked as a coastguard, before the family returned to Istanbul when he was 13.

Raised without much money, Erdogan sold lemonade and sesame buns on the streets as a teenager. A talented football player, he competed for many years and reportedly drew interest from top clubs, but was prevented from pursuing that path by his father. Erdogan instead attended the religious Istanbul Imam Hatip School, where he becameinvolved with the National Turkish Students Association, and passed the exams to earn a diploma from Eyup High School as well.

Influenced by the teachings of National Salvation Party leader Necmettin Erbakan, Erdogan was elected head of the party's Beyoglu Youth Branch and Istanbul YouthBranch in 1976. The party was dissolved in the wake of a 1980 military coup, and after Erdogan earned a graduate degree from Marmara Universitys 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 IstanbulProvincial head and named to the Central Executive Board. Tasked with improving voter turnout, Erdogan was credited for the party's success in the 1989 municipalelections.

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.

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 barredfrom public office, and ultimately wound up serving four months in prison in 1999.

His prison sentence complete, Erdogan co-founded the Justice and Development Party (AKP) in 2001. The AKP claimed a resounding victory in the 2002 parliamentaryelections, and Erdogan soon had his power officially restored thanks to a constitutional amendment that overturned his political ban. He became prime minister ofTurkey on March 9, 2003, and subsequently was reelected to the position twice more.

As prime minister, Erdogan markedly improved Turkey's economic standing. He reined in inflation and encouraged foreign investment, leading to a risein per capita income, stronger credit ratings and close ties with Western allies. However, Erdogan also increasingly became known as an authoritarian leader out to increase thebreadth of his power. In 2013, he had several senior military officials imprisoned for life for plotting to overthrow the AKP, and also ordered the military to crushpeaceful demonstrations at Istanbul's Gezi Park. The following year, after condemning the use of social media, he briefly blocked Turkey's access to Twitter andYouTube.

After reaching his term limits as prime minister, Erdogan became the AKP's candidate in Turkey's first direct election for the presidency, and was inaugurated onAugust 28, 2014. Although the role had previously been more of a ceremonial one, Erdogan indicated his intention to establish new powers as president. His goal wastemporarily impeded when the AKP failed to garner a majority in the 2015 parliamentary elections, but after attempts to form a coalition government faltered, the AKPregained the majority in an election that November.

Mountingunrest boiled over in the form of anattempted military coup on the night of July 15, 2016. Erdogan, who was vacationing with his family, narrowly avoided trouble when his hotel was raided, and successfully escaped to Istanbul. 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.

Erdogan blamed the uprising on followers of Fethullah Gulen, a Turkish cleric living in exile in the United States, and demanded the cleric's extradition. Along with imprisoning thousands of military personnel, he had tens of thousands police officers, judges, civil servants and teachers suspended, detained or placed under investigation. He then declared a national state of emergency,lending credence to the idea that he would use the experience to oust his known enemies and claim even more power.

Those fears were realized with the narrow passage of a constitutional referendum in April 2017, which eliminated the post of prime minister and gave Turkey's president new executive powers, including the ability to appoint judges and officials.

After Erdogan called for early elections in 2018, opposition parties put up a spirited fight in an attempt to halt his consolidation of power. However, the incumbent earned a reported 53 percent of the vote in the June 24 election, enough to avoid a runoff with the runner-up, Muharrem Ince. And while hisAKP earned less than 50 percent of the parliamentary vote, its alliance with the Nationalist Movement Party ensured a majority coalition there, as well.

That night, with the results still being processed but pointing toward victory, Erdogan delivered a short speech outside one of his Istanbul residences. "It seems the nation has entrusted me with the duty of the presidency, and to us a very big responsibility in the legislature," he said. "Turkey has given a lesson of democracy with a turnout of close to 90 percent. I hope that some will not provoke to hide their own failure."

Among the first steps Erdogan took in his second term was the formation of a response to U.S. President Donald Trump's tariffs on Turkish steel and aluminum imports. In August 2018, Turkey announced its own tariffs on a string of U.S. goods that included cars and alcohol, while Erdogan delivered a speech in which he called for a boycott of American electronic products.

Erdogan ran afoul of the Trump administration again the following year, after Turkey took advantage of the withdrawal of U.S. troops in northern Syria to push a military operation past promised boundaries and into areas that threatened Kurdish forces. Responding to Trump's threat of sanctions, Erdogan said: "They are pressuring us to stop the operation. They are announcing sanctions. Our goal is clear. We are not worried about any sanctions."

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Recep Tayyip Erdogan - - Biography

Erdogan is playing to an anti-American domestic audience with his nuclear rhetoric, but is highly unlikely to pursue nuclear weapons, said Jessica C. Varnum, an expert on Turkey at Middleburys James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, Calif. There would be huge economic and reputational costs to Turkey, which would hurt the pocketbooks of Erdogans voters.

For Erdogan, Ms. Varnum said, that strikes me as a bridge too far.

There is another element to this ambiguous atomic mix: The presence of roughly 50 American nuclear weapons, stored on Turkish soil. The United States had never openly acknowledged their existence, until Wednesday, when Mr. Trump did exactly that.

Asked about the safety of those weapons, kept in an American-controlled bunker at Incirlik Air Base, Mr. Trump said, Were confident, and we have a great air base there, a very powerful air base.

But not everyone is so confident, because the air base belongs to the Turkish government. If relations with Turkey deteriorated, the American access to that base is not assured.

Turkey has been a base for American nuclear weapons for more than six decades. Initially, they were intended to deter the Soviet Union, and were famously a negotiating chip in defusing the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, when President John F. Kennedy secretly agreed to remove missiles from Turkey in return for Moscow doing the same in Cuba.

But tactical weapons have remained. Over the years, American officials have often expressed nervousness about the weapons, which have little to no strategic use versus Russia now, but have been part of a NATO strategy to keep regional players in check and keep Turkey from feeling the need for a bomb of its own.

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Erdogans Ambitions Go Beyond Syria. He Says He Wants ...

ISTANBUL A raft of new American sanctions. An embargo on European arms sales. The indictment of a state-owned Turkish bank. Threats to isolate Turkey within NATO. A rise in global sympathy for the Kurdish cause. And the Syrian Army back in northern Syria.

The problems keep escalating for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, whose invasion of Kurdish-held northern Syria last week unraveled already tense relations with American and European partners and radically reshuffled the battle lines and alliances of Syrias eight-year-old Syrian war.

But as challenging as Mr. Erdogans predicament appears from the outside, analysts say, it is only likely to buttress his standing at home, as the fighting fans an already heightened state of nationalist feeling.

It also masks the near-fulfillment of one of the presidents most important foreign policy goals: Breaking the stranglehold of a hostile Kurdish militia on a vast stretch of the border, and the fracturing of the United States alliance with a group that Mr. Erdogan considers an existential threat to the Turkish state.

All of that has made it harder for the opposition to unite against Mr. Erdogan, or even to criticize him, and it has bolstered the presidents narrative that he and Turkey are the victims of an international conspiracy.

Americans, Europeans, Chinese, Arabs all united against Turkey, the front-page of Sozcu, a newspaper usually fiercely opposed to Mr. Erdogan, said on Wednesday. Bring it on.

In the last few weeks, the Turkish national soccer team has backed Mr. Erdogans campaign by giving military salutes at two international matches. Pop singers have expressed their support on social media. Even the head of Turkeys largest art fair emailed its international mailing list to condemn the black propaganda of international media coverage of the military operation.

Overall, this operation has been a success, said Ozgur Unluhisarcikli, an analyst who heads the Ankara office of the German Marshall Fund of the United States, a Washington-based research group.

Turkey has long opposed the influence of a Syrian Kurdish militia, known by its initials as the Y.P.G., since it is the offshoot of a guerrilla movement that has waged a decades-long insurgency against the Turkish state. Turkish officials grew alarmed when the militia took control of pockets of northern Syria in 2012, following a retreat by government forces amid the chaos of the Syrian civil war.

Ankara became particularly concerned when the militia expanded its grip by partnering with the United States military to force the Islamic State group, also known as ISIS, from the border region.

To Turkish fury, the United States protected the militia for nearly half a decade, encouraging the group to blur its identity by changing its name and enlisting more non-Kurdish fighters.

But this delicate peace was shattered last week when President Trump ordered American troops to withdraw from the Turkish-Syrian border. That allowed Turkish forces to invade, prompted American ground-forces and their international allies to abandon their bases in the area, and forced the Kurds to request protection from Russian and Syrian government troops.

The intervention by Russia and Syria came far quicker than expected, and will likely stop Mr. Erdogan from creating as large a buffer zone along the border as he previously hoped.

But it nevertheless brings him close to achieving his primary objective, said Mr. Unluhisarcikli.

Whats Turkeys objective? Its to stop the Y.P.G. from controlling territory in northeast Syria, Mr. Unluhisarcikli said. Whether its Turkey doing it or the Syrian regime, the Y.P.G.s control has been loosened.

Mr. Erdogan once hoped to topple President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, but now seems to see Mr. al-Assad as a lesser evil than the Kurdish militia. On Wednesday, he told a gaggle of reporters that he could accept the Assad regime re-entering the previously Kurdish-held city of Manbij, as long as it expelled Kurdish fighters from the area.

We are not very concerned about being in Manbij ourselves, Mr. Erdogan said. We have only one concern: Either Russia or the regime should remove the Y.P.G. from there.

He called for Kurdish fighters battling his troops in northeastern Syria to lay down their weapons and withdraw from the border area this very night.

Mr. al-Assads predecessor and father, Hafez al-Assad, provided Kurdish guerrillas fighting the Turkish state with refuge and space to organize in Syria in the 1980s and 90s, and Mr. Erdogan may fear a similar outcome.

But the younger al-Assad has repeatedly promised to re-establish control over every inch of Syria and few believe he will allow the Syrian Kurds to maintain their current level of autonomy.

Mr. Erdogans authoritarian domestic policies have long been a target of international criticism and unease, but the assault on Kurdish-held Syria has prompted an unusually high level of censure, even by Mr. Erdogans standards.

This week, Mr. Trump raised trade tariffs on Turkish steel, called off negotiations for a new Turkish trade deal worth $100 billion and placed financial sanctions on three Turkish ministers. I am fully prepared to swiftly destroy Turkeys economy if Turkish leaders continue down this dangerous and destructive path, he said in a statement on Monday.

On the same day, the defense secretary, Mark T. Esper, asked NATO members to take collective and individual diplomatic and economic measures against Turkey. On Wednesday, Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary Mike Pompeo flew to Ankara to press Mr. Erdogan into a cease-fire.

Several European countries, including Germany, the Netherlands and France, have now imposed embargoes on arms sales to Turkey.

On Tuesday, Volkswagen suspended plans to build a factory that would provide 4,000 jobs in western Turkey, saying it was concerned by the current situation but without explaining further.

Hours later, United States prosecutors in New York announced charges against a Turkish state-owned bank, accusing it of having helped Iran evade American sanctions by transferring billions of dollars on the Iranian governments behalf. As a punishment, prosecutors are pushing for the bank to forfeit an equivalent amount and the situation could hurt the banks ability to make international transactions.

The case may also have implications for Mr. Erdogan personally, as he is accused in the indictment of directing the scheme himself.

But though Turkeys economy is already teetering, some of these measures may turn out to be less effective than they appear.

Maybe people will come up with creative ways of excluding Turkey from NATO, said Amanda Sloat, a former State Department official who oversaw relations with Turkey. But theres no provision about the removal of a NATO member in the NATO founding documents.

The United States has ruled out a Turkish arms embargo, while the European arms embargoes are merely symbolic, said Marc Pierini, a former European Union ambassador to Turkey. Theyre not going to dent in any shape or form the Turkish military, Mr. Pierini added.

The European measures apply only to future sales, blunting their effect on the current operation. And though Germany supplies some of Turkeys tanks, the Turkish military was already more reliant on its U.S.-made tanks, because of pre-existing problems with the German models.

Whats more, the three sanctioned Turkish ministers have no known American assets. The $100 billion trade deal was never taken seriously in the first place. The new tariffs will likely not have much more effect, since Turkish exports to the U.S. are already low because of levies enforced last year.

Even if Congress imposes harsher measures of its own, the Trump administration could slow-walk putting them in place.

And though the economic crisis poses long-term challenges to Mr. Erdogans electoral prospects, in the past he has used external economic threats to boost his short-term popularity, portraying himself as Turkeys only viable bulwark against a sea of foreign troubles.

The war, then, has made it harder for opposition leaders to criticize Mr. Erdogan without being accused of a lack of patriotism.

Even Ekrem Imamoglu, an opposition politician who defeated Mr. Erdogans candidate in recent mayoral elections in Istanbul, and who is perceived as a future rival for the presidency, has been careful to show his strong support for the invasion. In a series of Twitter posts, he described the Kurdish militiamen as a treacherous terror group and said he was praying for the operations success.

Such statements add another obstacle to attempts by Turkeys opposition parties to defeat Mr. Erdogans party.

To win the mayoralty, Mr. Imamoglu required the informal support of a pro-Kurdish party, which typically receives around 10 percent of the national vote and whose supporters helped pull him over the line. But the partys perceived links to the Kurdish militant movement may now make it an electoral liability.

In the medium term, said Mr. Unluhisarcikli, President Erdogan has made it harder for the cohesion of the opposition alliance.

Reporting was contributed by Jack Ewing from Frankfurt; Matina Stevis-Gridneff from Brussels; Ben Hubbard from Dohuk, Iraq; and Carlotta Gall from Nusaybin, Turkey.

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The World Condemns Erdogans War on Kurds. But Turkey ...

LONDON Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has rejected U.S. calls for a cease-fire in the escalating Syria conflict ahead of a meeting with Vice President Mike Pence, who is due to travel to Turkey on Wednesday.

The vice presidents office announced Tuesday that Pence would lead a U.S. delegation including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, national security adviser Robert OBrien and the special representative for Syria, James Jeffrey, to Ankara. The aim of the trip was to persuade Erdogan to stop his offensive into the region.

On Tuesday, Erdogan vowed that he would not declare a cease-fire in northeast Syria.

They say declare a cease-fire.' We will never declare a cease-fire, Erdogan told reporters after a visit to Azerbaijan.

They are pressuring us to stop the operation. They are announcing sanctions. Our goal is clear. We are not worried about any sanctions, he added.

Earlier, when asked by Sky News about meeting an American delegation, Erdogan said through a translator: "I'm not going to talk to them. They will be talking to their counterparts. When Trump comes here, I'll be talking."

Erdogan's communications director, Fahrettin Altun, said afterward that while Erdogan would not be meeting with a U.S. delegation in Ankara on Wednesday, he would meet Pence and Pompeo on Thursday.

It is unclear whether in his original comments, Erdogan meant he would refuse to meet with Pence.

Pence aims to convince the Turkish leader to agree an immediate cease-fire. He will also reiterate President Donald Trumps commitment to maintain economic sanctions on Turkey until a resolution is reached, the vice president's office said in a statement.

Erdogan told reporters in Parliament on Wednesday that he will evaluate whether to visit the U.S. next month after the meetings with the American delegation in Ankara this week, according to a translation by Reuters.

He said no power would be able to stop Turkeys offensive in Syria, which would come to an end when Turkey completes the formation of its safe zone that will run from Manbij in the west to the border with Iraq, a distance of approximately 260 miles, he added.

"For the quickest solution to the problem in Syria, we propose all terrorists to leave their weapons and equipment, destroy the traps they prepared and leave the safe zone tonight," he told reporters.

Reaching a resolution could be an uphill battle. Trump reiterated Tuesday that the United States was calling for a cease-fire and appeared to threaten even more sanctions if one could not be reached.

Massive tariffs on steel. They ship a lot of steel to the United States. They make a lot of money shipping steel. They won't be making so much money, he told reporters Tuesday in the White Houses Rose Garden.

We want to bring our soldiers back home after so many years, and they're the greatest warriors in the world. They're policing. They're not a police force, he added.

On Monday, Trump ordered new sanctions on Turkish government figures and any persons contributing to Turkeys destabilizing actions in northeast Syria.

Trump said he plans to hike tariffs on steel up to 50 percent and immediately halt trade negotiations with the country, specifically a $100 billion trade deal.

In an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal on Monday, Erdogan said Operation Peace Spring, which launched Oct. 9, aimed to end the humanitarian crisis and address the violence and instability that are the root causes of irregular migration in our region.

Erdogan said the international community had not done enough to help Turkey with the millions of Syrian refugees the country took in.

Turkey reached its limit, he said.

The Kremlin said Tuesday that Russian President Vladimir Putin had invited Erdogan to visit Russia in the coming days and that the Turkish president had accepted the invitation. Kurdish troops, whom Turkish-led forces are battling, have called on Damascus and Moscow to help repel the invading Turkish troops.

These diplomatic overtures came as Syrian regime forces continued to push north toward the Turkish border and the Syrian Democratic Forces and Turkish-led forces clashed in Ras al Ayn and Tel Helef, among other places, according to the SDF.

Col. Myles Caggins, a spokesperson for the U.S.-led coalition of nations that are fighting the Islamic State militant group in the region, said all coalition troops had left the city of Manbij on Tuesday. Meanwhile, the Russian Ministry of Defense said Russian military police were patrolling the northwestern borders of Manbij district along the line of contact of Syrian regime troops and Turkish forces.

Saphora Smith is a London-based reporter for NBC News Digital.

Aziz Akyavas , Emmanuelle Saliba and Hallie Jackson contributed.

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Erdogan rejects Syria cease-fire call ahead of Pence meeting

ANKARA (Reuters) - President Tayyip Erdogan told U.S. President Donald Trump that Turkey will never declare a ceasefire in northeastern Syria and that it will not negotiate with Kurdish forces it is fighting in its offensive into the region.

Turkey pressed ahead with its offensive against the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia in northern Syria on Tuesday despite U.S. sanctions and calls for it to stop, while Syrias Russia-backed army moved on the key city of Manbij that was abandoned by U.S. forces.

The YPG, the key component of the forces who fought Islamic State, is seen by Ankara as a terrorist group linked to Kurdish separatist insurgents in Turkey.

On Monday, Trump announced sanctions on Turkey to punish it for the offensive. On Tuesday, a senior U.S. official said Washington would threaten more sanctions to persuade Turkey to reach a ceasefire and halt its offensive.

However, speaking to reporters on a flight back from Baku, Erdogan said the offensive would continue until it reaches its aims, and added that he was not worried about sanctions.

They say declare a ceasefire. We will never declare a ceasefire, Erdogan said. They are pressuring us to stop the operation. They are announcing sanctions. Our goal is clear. We are not worried about any sanctions, he said.

Erdogan said he told Trump in a phone call earlier this week that he should send a U.S. delegation to Ankara to discuss their demands and try to reach an agreement. The White House said on Tuesday that Vice President Mike Pence will meet with Erdogan in Ankara on Thursday.

Trumps decision to withdraw U.S. troops from northern Syria after a phone call with Erdogan not only cleared the way for the Turkish incursion, but it also gives a free hand to Washingtons adversaries in the worlds deadliest ongoing war, namely Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his Russian and Iranian allies.

Syrian army deployments into Kurdish-held territory mark a victory for Assad and Russia, giving them a foothold in the biggest remaining swathe of Syria that had been beyond their grasp through much of its eight-year-old war.

Asked about the deployment of Syrian forces to the northern town of Manbij, Erdogan, who has backed Syrian rebels fighting to oust Assad, said he was not bothered.

The regime entering Manbij is not very negative for me. Why? Its their lands after all. But, what is important to me is that the terrorist organization does not remain there, Erdogan said, referring to the YPG.

I told this to Mr Putin as well. If you are clearing Manbij of terrorist organizations, then go ahead, you or the regime can provide all the logistics. But if you are not going to do this, the people there are telling us to save them, he added.

Erdogan also said that an attack from Manbij on Tuesday, which killed one Turkish soldier, was launched by the Syrian government, and that Turkey made the regime pay a heavy price in retaliation.

Separately, the Turkish presidency said late on Tuesday that Erdogan told Russian President Vladimir Putin in a phone call that Turkeys operation would contribute to counter-terrorism efforts, Syrias territorial integrity, and a political solution process.

Reporting by Tuvan Gumrukcu; Editing by Chris Reese and Lisa Shumaker

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Erdogan says Turkey will never declare ceasefire in northern ...