Recep Tayyip Erdoğan: Age, Birthday & Biography

About

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is a Turkish politician and statesman who has served as President of Turkey since 2014, a position from which he has functioned as the country’s dominant political figure since 2002.

Before assuming the presidency, he served as Turkey’s 25th prime minister from 2003 to 2014, leading the country as head of the Justice and Development Party (AKP), which he co-founded in 2001. Earlier in his career, he served as mayor of Istanbul from 1994 to 1998, a role that helped establish him as a prominent national political figure well before his rise to the country’s highest offices.

Erdoğan comes from an Islamist political background and has consistently promoted socially conservative policies throughout his decades in power, reshaping much of Turkey’s political and social landscape along those lines.

Over his long tenure at the center of Turkish politics, spanning more than two decades as prime minister and then president, he has overseen sweeping changes to the country’s governance structures. His time in power has also been marked by significant controversy: observers and human rights organizations have documented democratic backsliding in Turkey during his leadership, alongside efforts to suppress political dissent, developments that have drawn considerable international attention and scrutiny of his governance.