site.btaTurkish President Erdogan Тurns 70

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan turned 70 on Monday.

He became Turkiye's Prime Minister in 2003. Erdogan, who served as Turkiye's prime minister for over 11 years, was elected with about 52% of the vote in the first direct presidential election in the republic's history on August 10, 2014, and then again was elected in the 2018 election. Erdogan won once again in the second round of the presidential election on May 28, 2023.

The President was born on February 26, 1954 in the Istanbul district of Kaspmpasa.

As a student, he became actively involved in politics, and in 1976 he was elected chair of the youth wing of the Islamist National Salvation Party.

After the coup on September 12, 1980, his political activity was interrupted. In 1983, he joined the Welfare Party. Erdogan became its head for Istanbul in 1985.

On March 27, 1994, Erdogan was elected mayor of Istanbul. Even his critics said that he did a good job as mayor in making the metropolis cleaner and greener.

In 1998, Erdogan was sentenced to ten months in prison for inciting religious hatred. He was convicted for reciting an Islamic poem at a rally in December 1997.
Erdogan was one of the founders of the Justice and Development Party (AKP), established on August 14, 2001. 

On November 3, 2002, the AKP won the parliamentary elections in Turkiye with 34%. Erdogan could not become prime minister because he was not elected to parliament due to his 1998 prison sentence for reciting an Islamic poem.

He supported Abdullah Gul for the position, while he organized his own by-elections in Siirt, which he could contest thanks to amendments passed by his AKP-dominated parliament. Erdogan became prime minister in March 2003.

Since its establishment, the AKP has had several consecutive electoral victories.

In the first years of Erdogan's rule, his success was due to a number of factors, among them the achievement of political and economic stability. Then, the Turkish economy grew by an average of 5%per year, during which the per capita income tripled. At the start of his administration, inflation and unemployment had also declined.

Erdoğan had also adopted a new approach to the Kurdish question, and also carried out important reforms required for the EU accession process.

However, the opposition accused and continue to accuse Erdogan of an authoritarian and Islamist bias.

Meanwhile, in recent years, the President has faced a number of problems, including high inflation, the devaluation of the Turkish national currency, the fight against terrorism. In 2023, Turkiye was also affected by devastating earthquakes with over 50 thousand victims.

Despite all the difficulties, however, in May 2023, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the AKP once again when prevailed in the presidential and parliamentary elections. Many significant infrastructure projects were implemented, tourism was on the rise.

On March 31, 2024, when local elections will be held in the country, Erdogan's partyy will face another challenge. The AKP aims to regain control of key cities, including Istanbul and the capital Ankara, from the main opposition Republican People's Party, which won those cities in the 2019 elections.