2023-05-28 18:02:05
He President of Türkiye Recep Tayyip Erdoganhas emerged as a controversial figure in recent years: feared and loved in equal measure, the Turkish politician, who has been in power for two decades, successfully faced the biggest electoral challenge since he took office.
The Turkish president, nicknamed “Reis” (Boss) by his supporters, has combined various facets since 2003 -political, religious, popular- that may explain his permanence for two decades at the top of this strategic country in which Europe, the Middle East and the Caucasus.
The conservative president, accused of “hyper-presidentialism”, He declared his victory in the second round of the presidential elections on May 28, which allows him to continue 5 more years in power.
Erdogan, 69, began his political career in the 1960s within Islamist activism, but it was not until 1994 that he became mayor of Istanbul. However, his political rise was temporarily thwarted by the 1998 coup.
Although he has now become the Turkish politician who has served the longest in power, it was not until the 2000s that he founded the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).
The party’s solid victory in the 2002 parliamentary elections brought Erdogan to the head of government, a position he would not relinquish until eleven years later due to the consecutive term limit established in the Turkish constitution.
In 2017, Erdogan, who managed to be elected president by popular vote two years before, decided to go a step further; he reaped a new victory in a referendum that allowed him to put into practice a turn towards a presidential model that left the figure of the prime minister out of the game and allowed him to combine powers.
Also nicknamed “the sultan” Turkish head of state, who supported a purely conservative model that garnered much criticism from the opposition and minority sectors of Turkish society, moved the country away from the secular path established by Kemal Ataturk, founder of the republic and figure indispensable for Turkish politics.
However, the events of recent years began to take their toll on an increasingly authoritarian and repressive president who might now suffer the consequences of a response that many consider lax and chaotic to crises and disasters that hit the population.
As Erdogan tries to position Turkey as a mediator at the international level, especially in conflicts such as the Russian invasion of Ukraine, everything points to a gradual but consistent decline in his popularity, something that was also noted within the NATO, where it continues to hinder the accession of Sweden for not complying with its demands.
There are many voices that have been warning for years that Turkey’s democracy, historically fragile, is in danger. His government has sharply increased crackdowns on dissidents, who accuse Erdogan of silencing journalists, activists and opponents, especially in the wake of the 2016 coup attempt.
The attempted coup led the government to launch a harsh campaign of arrests that has ended with thousands of people behind bars. Thus, in the last 20 years of power, Erdogan placed the country at the head of an authoritarian abyss that brought the judiciary under his wing.
This case materialized in 2022 with the conviction and disqualification of the mayor of Istanbul, the Social Democrat Ekrem Imamoglu, in what largely constituted a new attempt by the Government to leave him off the electoral board.
Erdogan the Builder
Erdogan littered Turkey with bridges, highways and airports, propelling the country into the 21st century at great speed and spurring exceptional economic growth in his first decade in office, which led to the rise of a new middle class.
Several projects illustrate the megalomaniac ambition of the head of state – who built a palace with more than a thousand rooms on a wooded hill in Ankara – such as the third bridge over the Bosphorus and the structure that will cross the Dardanelles Strait from 2022 (4.6 km), the longest suspension bridge in the world.
The gigantic Camlica Mosque (30,000 seats) in Istanbul, with its 107-meter-high minarets, joins the city’s third airport, opened in 2018, as well as high-speed rail lines, hydroelectric and thermal power plants, and the the country’s first nuclear power plant, inaugurated days ago.
The “crazy project”, in his words, of the Istanbul Canal (45 km long and 275 m wide), which he wants to drill parallel to the Bosphorus, however suffers from a lack of funds.
Erdogan, the footballer
In the working-class neighborhood of Kasimpasa, in Istanbul, the young Recep Tayyip Erdogan grew up in harsh conditions and, according to legend, he let off steam by kicking a ball made of rags and paper.
As a teenager, his tall height (1.85 m) made him a coveted center forward for local clubs and earned offers from professional clubs such as the prestigious Fenerbahçe Istanbul.
But his father, an austere Black Sea sailor, forced him to pursue religious studies. Erdogan reluctantly gave up football, but stayed close to the stadiums, showing off alongside the best Turkish players.
In 2014, people close to his AKP party (Justice and Development Party, Islamoconservative) acquired the Basaksehir Istanbul club, which won the national championship for the first time in 2020.
Erdogan, a pious man
In the secular Turkey founded by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, Erdogan attended the first public religious schools that combined the study of the Qur’an with secular subjects. His training in a college of preachers greatly influenced his rise.
Islam was a mobilizing element of his electorate, as was his party, the AKP. The Turkish leader promotes mercy, stands as a defender of the family, which he considers threatened by the women’s emancipation movements and the LGTBQ + collective.
When he was mayor of Istanbul (1994-1998) he limited the sale of alcohol and also authorized women to cover their heads with a headscarf at the university and at public functions.
In 2020, he turned the former Hagia Sophia and the former Church of St. Savior of Chora in Istanbul into mosques.
Erdogan, a great speaker
Erdogan made the most of his ability to deal with crowds live and on television: he is capable of holding up to eight political events in one day, haranguing incessantly, kissing babies on stage or hugging old women.
The pro-government media broadcast all his speeches live.
According to the Supreme Council of Radio and Television (RTÜK), between April 1 and May 1, state television TRT gave 32 hours of live coverage of the presidential speeches and 32 minutes of his opposition rival, Kemal Kiliçdaroglu. .
The recent Reporters Without Borders (RSF) annual press freedom ranking ranked Turkey 165 out of 180, a drop of 16 places in one year.
Erdogan, an international negotiator
Erdogan knew how to use Turkey’s unique position between Europe and the Middle East and become a guardian of the southern shore of the Black Sea.
Since the beginning of the Russian offensive in Ukraine, despite the fact that Turkey is a NATO member, Erdogan has been careful in his relations with both parties and has maintained contact with his counterpart Vladimir Putin, on whom he depends for the country’s energy needs.
Instead, it fell out with most of its neighbors: from Bashar Al Asad’s Syria to Marshal Al Sisi’s Egypt, passing through Greece, Iraq, Israel and the Gulf countries.
But in the last eighteen months he has undertaken a vast campaign of reconciliation with most of them.
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