First as prime minister after which as president, Erdogan has confronted moments of uncertainty (he survived a coup try in 2016). Over time, although, he has moved towards one-man rule, consolidating energy and leveraging Turkey’s worldwide sway.
A polarizing determine, he has presided over hovering inflation, and in current months, his authorities and social gathering have come beneath intense criticism for his or her response to earthquakes that left greater than 50,000 individuals lifeless in Turkey and Syria this yr. Nonetheless, he received eight of 11 provinces within the earthquake catastrophe zone within the first spherical, partly by managing perceptions by his near-total management of the media.
Whereas in workplace, Erdogan has deepened restrictions on speech and expression, and beneath his authorities, the judiciary has jailed or introduced expenses in opposition to opponents. Kemal Kilicdaroglu, his most distinguished challenger, has promised an alternate: “Nothing won’t ever, ever occur to you since you criticize me.”
Listed here are a few of the important thing factors in Erdogan’s profession as a public servant and participant on the world stage, tracing his path from widespread Istanbul mayor to entrenched one-man rule.
1994: Erdogan, already concerned in native politics, runs for mayor of Istanbul, profitable with roughly 25 % of the vote as a member of the Welfare Get together. As mayor, Erdogan focuses on modernizing public items and providers — together with by privatization. Amongst his constituency: rural-to-urban migrants in search of an alternative choice to the entrenched secular institution.
1997: Erdogan is accused of inciting non secular hatred after he recites a passage from a poem with militant non secular imagery — “the minarets are our bayonets” — that runs afoul of Turkey’s legal guidelines imposing secularism. As a social conservative from an Islamist political custom, he seeks to realize extra political illustration for non secular Muslims.
1998: Pressured to resign as mayor, Erdogan serves a four-month jail sentence over the recitation in early 1999. His imprisonment solely raises his profile.
2001: Erdogan founds the Justice and Growth Get together, or AKP. He and his allies make the calculation {that a} simple Islamist social gathering wouldn’t win energy in Turkey within the early 2000s. The AKP positions itself as conservative and respectful of Islamic custom. “I’m a Muslim,” Erdogan advised TIME Journal in 2002. “However I imagine in a secularist state.”
2003: Erdogan turns into prime minister after his social gathering wins energy in parliament, and a few authorized adjustments to permit him to serve regardless of his previous imprisonment. In that function, and within the context of Turkey’s pursuit of European Union membership, Erdogan’s authorities pursues reforms, together with sweeping adjustments to the penal code and more cash allotted to schooling spending, in addition to legal guidelines increasing freedom of expression and faith. These come alongside a extra conservative agenda, together with makes an attempt to limit the sale of alcohol, which Erdogan additionally pursued as mayor of Istanbul.
2009: President Barack Obama chooses Turkey because the vacation spot for his first abroad bilateral diplomatic journey. His go to affirms a imaginative and prescient of Turkey charting a path for a type of Islamism acceptable within the West and seemingly certain for E.U. membership. “I got here right here out of my respect to Turkey’s democracy and tradition and my perception that Turkey performs a critically necessary function within the area and on the planet,” Obama says in remarks to a scholar roundtable throughout that go to, throughout which he talked about having “productive” conversations with Erdogan.
200os: E.U. accession talks, which start in 2005, stall within the late aughts, with a number of world leaders expressing frustration over the tempo of negotiations.
2010s: Regionally, Erdogan receives reward for his management of Turkey all through the Arab Spring, when uprisings rocked the Arab world, in response to the Brookings Establishment’s 2011 Arab public opinion ballot. Among the many ballot’s 3,000 respondents in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco and the United Arab Emirates, “Turkey is seen to have performed the ‘most constructive’ function within the Arab occasions,” reads a Brookings write-up of the ballot’s outcomes. Amongst respondents, the write-up says, “those that envision a brand new president for Egypt need the brand new president to look most like Erdogan.”
Round that very same time, in late 2010, Erdogan and the AKP win a constitutional referendum that curbs the ability of the army and adjustments presidential elections right into a nationwide, fairly than parliamentary, vote.
2013: Huge anti-government protests, sparked by public opposition to an Erdogan-backed building mission in Istanbul’s Gezi Park, mark a flip in Erdogan’s political trajectory. Activists launch a sit-in, and the following police response spawns a wider motion, and in flip, a extra sprawling crackdown.
That very same yr, a sweeping corruption scandal implicates members of the AKP in instances of bribery, cash laundering and fraud, ensuing within the resignations of quite a few politicians, together with members of Erdogan’s cupboard. Audio recordings leaked by way of social media additionally seem to seize Erdogan discussing bribes together with his son. Erdogan dismisses the recordings as fabrications, a part of a world conspiracy to drive him out of energy.
2014: Erdogan attains the presidency, profitable Turkey’s first presidential election based mostly on a nationwide vote.
2016: In March, Erdogan involves an settlement with the E.U., amid a regional migration disaster, permitting individuals fleeing west to be returned to Turkey. The accord “turns Turkey into the area’s refugee camp and leaves untold 1000’s stranded in a rustic with a deteriorating file on human rights,” The Washington Publish experiences on the time.
After a failed army coup try on July 15, which plunges the nation into temporary however violent chaos, Erdogan consolidates energy. He oversees a strict clampdown on impartial and demanding press. (The New York-based Committee to Shield Journalists has named Turkey one of many prime jailers of journalists.) Erdogan begins a collection of purges, ousting 1000’s, together with former allies, from politics, academia, the judiciary and the army, together with the expulsion of overseas NGOs from the nation. The purges goal many followers of exiled cleric Fethullah Gulen, a former ally of Erdogan’s.
2017: Voters approve a slate of constitutional reforms put ahead by Erdogan, which change Turkey’s type of authorities, abolishing the prime minister place and vesting energy in an government president. The next yr, Erdogan is reelected president, with the function providing significantly extra energy than in 2014.
After changing into president, Erdogan enacts restrictions on social media platforms and web sites together with Twitter, YouTube and Wikipedia, and considerably curtails impartial media by arrests and purges, whereas propping up tightly managed pro-government retailers. With respect to Turkey’s strikes towards E.U. membership, European Council President Charles Michel goes on to say that the nation’s authorities usually takes “one step in the suitable route after which two within the fallacious route.”
2018: After the killing of Washington Publish contributor Jamal Khashoggi on the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, of which Turkish officers get hold of audio recordings, Erdogan seems to push for extra distant ties between Riyadh and Washington. “The place is Khashoggi’s physique? … Who gave the order to kill this sort soul? Sadly, the Saudi authorities have refused to reply these questions,” Erdogan writes in an op-ed for The Publish.
2019: For the primary time because the social gathering’s formation, the AKP candidate loses the Istanbul mayoral elections. The put up is stuffed by Ekrem Imamoglu, a member of the opposition Republican Folks’s Get together. Imamoglu, a preferred mayor with presidential prospects, is sentenced to jail on the cost of “insulting public figures” in 2022, dashing his possibilities of standing in opposition to Erdogan within the 2023 presidential election and casting doubt on Erdogan’s willingness to permit a good election.
In October, Turkey launches an offensive in opposition to U.S.-allied Kurdish forces in northern Syria. The transfer locations the NATO powers at odds over the combat in opposition to the Islamic State.
2022-2023: Amid Russia’s conflict in Ukraine, Erdogan leverages Turkey’s standing as a NATO member with ties to Russia to place himself as a mediator. In 2022, Turkey and the United Nations facilitate an settlement between Russia and Ukraine to revive business shipments of grain blockaded by Russia within the Black Sea, in alternate for loosened restrictions on sure Russian exports. However Erdogan holds up Sweden’s bid for NATO membership, saying that the nation harbors “terrorists” hostile to Turkey’s nationwide safety.