President R.T. Erdoğan: A portrait (I)

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey’s 12th president, is a former footballer, imam, businessman and a mayor of Istanbul. Ideologically, he comes from a political culture of secular/pluralistic libertarianism matured in the 1990s and reflected itself in his various public speeches including, “Marriage certificates should be issued by imams, not by municipal officials.” (Jan. 8, 1995); “The system we want to establish cannot contradict with God’s orders. Our reference is Islam.” (Sept. 23, 1996); and “We need [the Ottoman Sultan] Abdulhamid Khan’s mindset.” (Feb. 3, 1996).

Between 2002, when his party came to power, and 2014, when he became Turkey’s first popularly elected president, he was the country’s most popular prime minister. Great economic and technological achievements took place in that period. For instance, social media inventions like Twitter and Facebook, as well as smart phones, Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner, hydrogen powered cars and nanotechnology were all born during his premiership.

Meanwhile, Turkey took a giant step forward in indigenous fighter jet production by successfully passing the critical stage of producing the country’s first local airplane seat in 2014. But that was not a coincidence. Two years earlier, in 2012, in an international championship with 249 contestants from 83 countries, the Turkish team, racing with an all-Turkish airplane, won the team trophy in the Red Bull Paper Airplane finals – in the longest airtime discipline.

Turkey’s economic growth radically jumped from an average 4.8 percent before he came to power to 4.9 percent under his three terms. As a result, the Turkish economy became the world’s 17th biggest economy compared with...

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