Recep Tayyip Erdoğan born 26 February 1954) is the and current , in office since 2014. He previously served as the from 2003 to 2014 and as the from 1994 to 1998. Originating from an political background and identifying as a, his administration has overseen and policies. He founded the (AK Party) in 2001, leading it to three general election victories in , and , before stepping down as party leader upon his in 2014. Erdoğan was a playing for between 1969 and 1982 before being elected as the Mayor of Istanbul in from the Islamist . In 1998, he was banned from office and sentenced to prison for 10 months after reciting a []poem in . Abandoning openly Islamist politics, Erdoğan founded the moderate AK Party in 2001, leading it to winning almost a in the held barely a year later. became Prime Minister and served until annulled Erdoğan's political ban with the help of , allowing him to run for parliament and to take over as Prime Minister in March 2003.
Erdoğan was born in the neighborhood of to which his family had moved from . Erdoğan allegedly said in 2003, "I'm a , my family is a family which migrated from to ." However, in a 2014 televised interview on the news network, he said, "You wouldn't believe the things they have said about me. They have said I am Georgian...even with much uglier things, they have called me Armenian, but I am Turkish."
Erdoğan spent his early childhood in , where his father was a member of the . The family returned to Istanbul when Erdoğan was 13 years old. As a teenager, he sold lemonade and sesame buns () on the streets of the city's rougher districts to earn extra money.
Brought up in an observant Muslim family, Erdoğan graduated from Kasımpaşa Piyale primary school in 1965, and , a religious vocational high school, in 1973. He received his high school diploma from Eyüp High School. He subsequently studied at the Aksaray School of Economics and Commercial Sciences (now known as's Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences).
In his youth, Erdoğan played semi-professional at a local club. wanted him to transfer to the club but his father prevented it. The stadium of the local football club in the district where he grew up, is named after him.
Erdoğan married Emine Gülbaran (born 1955, ) on 4 July 1978. They have two sons; Ahmet Burak and Necmeddin Bilal, and two daughters, Esra and Sümeyye. His father, Ahmet Erdoğan, died in 1988 and his 88-year-old mother, Tenzile Erdoğan, died in 2011. He is a member of the , a Turkish sufistic community of .
While studying business administration and playing semi-professional football, Erdoğan engaged in politics by joining the National Turkish Student Union, an action group. In 1974, he wrote, directed and played the lead role in the Maskomya, which presented , and as evil. In 1976, he became the head of the youth branch of the Islamist (MSP), and was later promoted to chair of the Istanbul youth branch of the party.
After the , Erdoğan followed most of 's followers into the . He became the party's Beyoğlu district chair in 1984, and in 1985 he became the chair of the Istanbul city branch. He was elected to parliament in 1991, but barred from taking his seat.
