Recep Tayyip Erdoğan

Overview

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is president of Turkey and founder and leader of the Justice and Development Party (AKP). His party won national power in 2002, and a legal restriction delayed his appointment as prime minister until 2003. He became president in 2014. Across more than two decades in power, Erdoğan has concentrated decisions within Turkey’s state institutions in his own hands while changing the country’s relationship with religion, its Kurdish policy and its foreign alliances.

Erdoğan’s rise marked a departure from the secular vision of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, who founded the modern Turkish republic and curtailed the political authority of religious institutions. Erdoğan has expanded the public role of religion. His 2020 conversion of Hagia Sophia from a museum into a mosque reversed one of Atatürk’s defining decisions. His government has also combined gestures toward religious minorities with restrictions on their institutions.

Abroad, Erdoğan has pursued regional influence through diplomacy, trade, military operations and support for political movements. His record toward Israel spans a 2005 diplomatic visit, later efforts at normalization, condemnation of Jewish self-determination, close relations with Hamas and a 2024 threat of Turkish military action. His purchase of Russian S-400 air-defense systems led to Turkey’s removal from the United States F-35 fighter program in 2019.

Early life

Erdoğan was born in Istanbul in 1954. His political roots lie in Turkey’s movement for Political Islam. Necmettin Erbakan, who led five successive parties in that movement between 1970 and 2011, was his mentor. Erdoğan later presented himself as having broken with that political tradition, although debates over religion’s place in public life remained central to his career.

In 2001, Erdoğan founded the Justice and Development Party and described it as “conservative democratic,” comparing its outlook with that of Europe’s Christian Democrats. The description helped define a new national vehicle for politicians emerging from Turkey’s religiously conservative movement. After the AKP’s 2002 electoral victory, Erdoğan’s legal restriction kept him from immediately becoming prime minister. He took the office in 2003 and began a long period of national leadership.

Career

In its early years in government, the AKP pursued regional influence through soft power and cultivated trade and diplomatic ties. Erdoğan visited Israel in 2005, met Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and President Moshe Katsav, and laid a wreath at Yad Vashem. He offered to mediate Middle East peace efforts and sought stronger commercial and military relations. In 2006, however, he invited senior Hamas leaders to Ankara shortly after the terrorist organization’s election victory, worsening relations with Israel.

Erdoğan initially pursued a conciliatory policy toward Turkey’s Kurds. His government’s “Kurdish Opening” made progress but stalled after the 2011 parliamentary elections. In early 2013, his government resumed negotiations with Kurdistan Workers’ Party leader Abdullah Öcalan. By then, the conflict had killed about 40,000 people in Turkey, including 700 in 2012. Erdoğan designated pro-Kurdish political leader Selahattin Demirtaş as a negotiator. Kurdish politicians continued talks during the 2013 Gezi Park protests, which had begun at Istanbul’s Taksim Square and challenged Erdoğan’s government ahead of the planned 2014 presidential election.

The talks unfolded alongside sharp differences over Öcalan’s status. His death sentence had been commuted to life imprisonment in 2002, yet Erdoğan raised the possibility of restoring Turkey’s death penalty during the renewed negotiations. The peace process ended after the June 2015 parliamentary election. Erdoğan pushed for another election, and the AKP regained its electoral strength in November. His later policy toward Kurdish political and cultural activity became markedly more forceful. Authorities restricted Kurdish-language education and cultural events and imprisoned about 12 members of the pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party from 2016 onward, including Demirtaş. The Kurdish question remained a major issue in Turkey’s May 2023 general election.

Erdoğan’s alliance with the Gülen movement also collapsed. Formerly aligned with his government, the movement became a political rival amid corruption investigations. In January 2014, Erdoğan replaced police chiefs in İzmir while suspecting links between investigators and Gülen affiliates. After the failed July 2016 coup, his government launched a far-reaching campaign against the movement. Tens of thousands of Turkish citizens faced accusations of membership and lost jobs, property or freedom. The campaign also reached journalists, activists, authors and other critics. Religious leaders from Syriac, Jewish, Armenian and Greek Orthodox communities joined in condemning the coup attempt.

Erdoğan’s approach to religious minorities combined restitution of property with constraints on independent institutions. His government returned some assets to minority foundations while also moving to prevent those foundations from electing their governing boards. Those actions made the exercise of minority institutional rights dependent on government decisions. During the same period, Erdoğan increasingly centralized authority over public institutions and political decision-making.

Domestic opposition achieved a significant victory in Istanbul in 2019. The AKP lost the mayoralty there for the first time in 25 years when Ekrem İmamoğlu narrowly won the March election. Turkey’s election board annulled that result on May 6 and ordered a June 23 rerun. İmamoğlu then won by more than nine percentage points, exposing the political cost of voiding the first result. Erdoğan nevertheless retained national power.

On March 31, 2024, the AKP failed to finish first in Turkey’s municipal elections for the first time since coming to power. It received about 35 percent of the vote. Opposition candidates held Istanbul, Ankara and İzmir and won other cities, including conservative strongholds. Economic frustration was a major factor. Erdoğan’s campaign emphasized his condemnation of Israel and Turkish aid to Gaza, but that appeal did not prevent the defeat. He remained president after the municipal results.

Ideology and statements

Erdoğan’s political career has been shaped by religious conservatism, Turkish state power and an expansive view of Turkey’s regional role. His government has backed Muslim Brotherhood parties and governments and hosted leaders expelled by other states. It has drawn on the legacy of the Ottoman Empire in its account of Turkey’s place in surrounding regions. At home, Erdoğan’s policies have reshaped the relationship between religion and state that Atatürk sought to establish.

Hagia Sophia became a prominent symbol of that divide. Atatürk’s 1934 decision to make the building a museum expressed the secular republic’s vision. Erdoğan called the museum decision a major mistake in 2019. Following a July 2020 court ruling, he immediately signed an order allowing Muslim prayers there from July 24. A 2010 constitutional amendment had enabled him to appoint a majority of the Council of State judges serving when it ruled on Hagia Sophia. The conversion carried religious and political weight for Erdoğan’s supporters and opponents alike.

Erdoğan’s statements about Israel have included attacks on Zionism, the Jewish people’s national movement for self-determination in their historical homeland, the Land of Israel. At a United Nations event in March 2013, he called Zionism “a crime against humanity.” That statement stood in sharp contrast to his 2005 message to Israeli leaders that his party regarded antisemitism as a crime against humanity. His rhetoric became a persistent source of concern in relations between Turkey and Israel.

In September 2019, Erdoğan raised the possibility of Turkey developing its own nuclear capability and singled out Israel in his remarks. His foreign-policy statements have also reflected a belief that the Kurdish question extends across Turkey, Syria and Iraq. That view has helped drive Turkish policy beyond the country’s borders, especially against Kurdish forces linked to organizations Ankara regards as threats.

Role in attacks or conflicts

Relations with Israel deteriorated after Erdoğan publicly confronted Israeli President Shimon Peres at the 2009 World Economic Forum in Davos over Israel’s military action in Gaza. In May 2010, Israeli troops stopped a flotilla attempting to breach Israel’s Gaza blockade. Eight Turkish citizens and one Turkish-American were killed aboard the convoy. Erdoğan called the operation “state terrorism,” Turkey recalled its ambassador, and bilateral relations sharply worsened. Erdoğan endorsed renewed normalization in December 2015, but the relationship remained vulnerable to further crises.

Turkey’s military operations against Kurdish forces extended into Syria and Iraq. In 2017, Erdoğan signaled further action in Iraq while Turkish aircraft were already striking PKK targets in the Qandil Mountains. Turkey’s 2018 operation in Afrin prompted United States President Donald Trump to urge Erdoğan to limit the offensive and avoid harming civilians or American forces. Turkish authorities detained more than 300 people, including opposition politicians, over social-media criticism of the operation. After Afrin’s capture, Erdoğan threatened further operations around Kobani, Manbij and Sinjar.

In October 2014, Erdoğan had warned that Kobani was about to fall. His government later sought a continued American troop presence in northeastern Syria partly to contain the PKK-linked Democratic Union Party and its armed wing, the People’s Defense Units. After American support was withdrawn from a border area in 2019, Turkish forces attacked Kurdish forces in northeastern Syria. Erdoğan sought a buffer area along Turkey’s frontier that would suppress the armed group and replace Kurds there with Sunni Arabs. His cross-border policy has therefore linked Turkey’s domestic Kurdish conflict with the wars in Syria and Iraq.

Erdoğan also used military involvement in Libya and Karabakh as examples of Turkey’s ability to act beyond its borders. In July 2024, he threatened that Turkey might enter Israel as it had entered those places. His government had announced a full trade embargo on Israel in May, during the Gaza war. Erdoğan maintained close ties with Hamas leadership. After Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was killed in July 2024, Erdoğan called him his “brother” and declared a national day of mourning in Turkey.

Turkey’s ties with Russia created a separate dispute with its NATO partners. Its purchase of Russian S-400 air-defense systems led to removal from the United States F-35 fighter program in 2019. Russian President Vladimir Putin had called Erdoğan the day after the failed 2016 coup, helping repair strained relations between Moscow and Ankara. After Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Erdoğan joined Putin and Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi at a summit in Tehran. On July 10, 2023, Erdoğan withdrew his objection to Sweden’s accession to NATO, allowing Turkish parliamentary approval to advance.

In Cyprus, Erdoğan has promoted recognition of a separate state in the north since 2020, departing from international efforts to reunify the island as one federal state. Turkey alone recognizes the northern breakaway entity created after its 1974 invasion. During a July 2021 visit, Erdoğan and Turkish Cypriot leader Ersin Tatar announced civilian access to part of Varosha’s closed military zone. The move breached United Nations Security Council resolutions calling for United Nations administration and the return of former residents. Two Turkish Cypriot opposition parties boycotted the parliamentary session he attended.

Erdoğan has also intervened diplomatically in other regional crises. In May 2022, amid deteriorating relations with Greece, he declared that Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis no longer existed for him. In April 2023, Erdoğan announced that Turkish intelligence had killed Islamic State leader Abu al-Hussein al-Husseini al-Qurashi in northwestern Syria; the reported killing lacked independent confirmation at the time. After the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in December 2024, Erdoğan pledged Turkish help in building Syria’s new government. That month, he called Sudanese leader Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and offered to mediate Sudan’s dispute with the United Arab Emirates.

Death or current status

Erdoğan remains president of Turkey. The AKP’s 2024 municipal defeat weakened its position in major cities but did not end his presidency. His government continued to shape regional security after that vote. On August 7, 2026, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan signed the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement, pledging to treat an armed attack on one member as an attack on all.

Legacy

Erdoğan has been a defining figure in modern Turkish politics. He built the AKP into a governing party, held national power through electoral challenges and concentrated authority within the presidency and state institutions. His rule changed the public position of religion, most visibly through Hagia Sophia’s conversion. It also brought an initial attempt to negotiate an end to the Kurdish conflict, followed by renewed repression and cross-border warfare.

His international record combines diplomacy with confrontational rhetoric and military action. Outreach to Israel in 2005 and a normalization effort in 2015 stand alongside his condemnation of Zionism, embrace of Hamas leaders, 2024 embargo and threat against Israel. His operations in Syria, Iraq and Libya, his Cyprus policy and his purchase of Russian weapons have affected relations with neighboring states and NATO allies. At home, the opposition’s Istanbul victories in 2019 and municipal gains in 2024 demonstrated enduring electoral resistance to his rule, even as he continued to hold the presidency.