Recep Tayyip Erdogan has cemented his status as the most important figure in modern Turkish history, after victory in Sunday’s presidential runoff extended his transformative two-decade rule to 2028.
The ultimate political survivor, Erdogan, 69, has overcome jail and a bloody 2016 coup attempt to steer his country through an era of diplomatic clout, economic development and political strife.
An unprecedented opposition coalition, galvanised by a biting economic crisis and fury over a calamitous February earthquake, represented the toughest national electoral challenge for the Islamic-rooted conservative.
But while polling forecast he was closer to defeat than ever, Erdogan beat the odds yet again to come within a whisker of winning in the first round before clinching victory on Sunday.
He defeated his secular opposition rival, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, by four percentage points — closer than any other election, but enough to end his political career undefeated in national polls.
His aura of invincibility reaffirmed, none can deny Turkey’s longest-serving leader is the country’s most consequential since Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the revered founder of the post-Ottoman republic.
Admirers laud Erdogan for unshackling religious restrictions in the officially secular but mostly Muslim state, overseeing ambitious infrastructure projects and turning Turkey into a geopolitical force.
Detractors accuse him of slipping into authoritarianism reminiscent of the Ottoman sultans, shaking Turkey’s democratic foundations and impoverishing millions through misguided beliefs that contradict conventional economics.
– Rewriting the rules –
Although the runoff provided his rule with a fresh mandate, the nation of 85 million is likely to remain sharply polarised.
Known to his inner circle as “beyefendi” (sir) and to admirers as “reis” (the chief), Erdogan prides himself on being able to woo doubters through tireless campaigning.
This passion has helped him and his party win more than a dozen local and national votes, allowing Erdogan to claim a people’s mandate for his foreign military adventures and domestic clampdowns on dissent.
Erdogan risked his political domination on a 2017 referendum on abolishing the office of prime minister and handing greater powers to the president.
He eked out a narrow win then, enfeebling parliament and enabling him to effectively rule by decree. It also gave him the constitutional loophole needed to run for two more terms in office — an outcome set to be fulfilled.
– Power and protests –
Born in a working-class harbour district of Istanbul, Erdogan made his name in nascent Islamic movements that were challenging secular domination, becoming the city’s mayor in 1994.
His mayoral term was cut short when he was convicted and jailed for four months for inciting religious hatred when he recited a fiery poem that compared mosques to army barracks and called minarets “our bayonets”.
Among supporters, this…
