Recep Tayyip Erdoğan

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Recep Tayyip Erdoğan  link Twitter Website Wikiquote (Politician)
Born	26 February 1954 Istanbul, Turkey
Alma mater	Marmara University
Religion	Sunni Islam
Children	Ahmet Burak, Sümeyye, Bilal, Esra
Spouse	Emine Gülbaran
Party	National Salvation Party, Welfare Party, Virtue Party, Justice and Development Party
Became President of Turkey in 2014

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is the current President of Turkey. As Prime Minister from 2003, Erdogan was allied to Fethullah Gülen but that alliance was destroyed after the 2013 corruption investigations in Turkey (and the subsequent coup attempt in 2016). Since taking over as President in August 2014, Erdogan's opponents have accused him of repeatedly exceeding his powers.

Migration Politics

Erdoğan was one of the sole neighbouring countries accepting Syrian refugees, resulting in almost 5 million by 2020. During the first few years of the crisis, the Turkish president kept demanding money from the EU and European border agency FRONTEX to help set up living spaces for the migrants or promised to let them "into Europe", often threatening it as a bad thing, as if the migrants were all bad to begin with, seemingly creating a weird paradox.

New Ottoman Reich

In April 2017, following a referendum which would abolish the post of Prime Minister and make the leader an Executive President, the Moon of Alabama blog carried the following article:

{{#subobject: |Has superobject=Recep Tayyip Erdoğan |Has objectClass=Quotation |Has author=|+sep=, |Has text=“The wannbe Sultan of a new Ottoman Reich, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, let his people vote in a referendum about new extensive powers for his office. Yesterday's "yes"/"no" vote was allegedly won by the "yes" side with 51.4% of the votes. This even though the "no" vote won in all major cities. In Turkey the vote in the major cities usually reflects the total. The campaign for the vote was very unfair with all state media and offices pushing for a "yes". Opposition politicians were put to jail or threatened with retribution. Media opposing Erdogan were suppressed or completely closed down.

There is significant reasons to believe that the vote count was fraudulently manipulated. On the day of the vote the election commission, stuffed with Erdogan cronies, suddenly allowed ballots without the official stamp to be counted. According to Turkish election laws each ballot, and each envelope of a postal vote, needs to be officially stamped before voting starts. This is supposed to prevent ballot stuffing with ballots printed outside of the official channels. The election commission has given no reason yet why it thought that such a last minute rule change, in opposition to the law, was necessary or even legal. Use of unstamped ballots was reported out of many election localities in rural areas where the "yes" votes now were the majority. Additionally video was recorded of local election workers stamping ballots after they had been used for voting.

The opposition is protesting and will go to court. But it will likely have little success. Erdogan has removed all judges and other legal personal that could go against him. An amateurish coup attempt against him, which he knew about before it happened, was used by him to clean all public offices of people not aligned with his party and program.

The new powers of the presidency will only come into force after the next election for the presidency. But everyone expects that Erdogan will use them right away. With the issue of the referendum put aside Erdogan is now free to escalate interior and exterior conflicts. We can expect new Turkish operations in Syria as well as in Iraq to be launched soon.” |Is about=Recep Tayyip Erdoğan,Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey, Turkey/Deep state|+sep=, |Has wikipediaPage= |Has location=|+sep=, |Has publicationDate= |Sourced from=Moon Of Alabama |Has sourceDetails= |Has sourceTitle=Goodbye Turkey |Has sourceName=Moon Of Alabama |Has sourceURL=http://www.moonofalabama.org/2017/04/goodbye-turkey.html

}}

“The wannbe Sultan of a new Ottoman Reich, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, let his people vote in a referendum about new extensive powers for his office. Yesterday's "yes"/"no" vote was allegedly won by the "yes" side with 51.4% of the votes. This even though the "no" vote won in all major cities. In Turkey the vote in the major cities usually reflects the total. The campaign for the vote was very unfair with all state media and offices pushing for a "yes". Opposition politicians were put to jail or threatened with retribution. Media opposing Erdogan were suppressed or completely closed down.

There is significant reasons to believe that the vote count was fraudulently manipulated. On the day of the vote the election commission, stuffed with Erdogan cronies, suddenly allowed ballots without the official stamp to be counted. According to Turkish election laws each ballot, and each envelope of a postal vote, needs to be officially stamped before voting starts. This is supposed to prevent ballot stuffing with ballots printed outside of the official channels. The election commission has given no reason yet why it thought that such a last minute rule change, in opposition to the law, was necessary or even legal. Use of unstamped ballots was reported out of many election localities in rural areas where the "yes" votes now were the majority. Additionally video was recorded of local election workers stamping ballots after they had been used for voting.

The opposition is protesting and will go to court. But it will likely have little success. Erdogan has removed all judges and other legal personal that could go against him. An amateurish coup attempt against him, which he knew about before it happened, was used by him to clean all public offices of people not aligned with his party and program.

The new powers of the presidency will only come into force after the next election for the presidency. But everyone expects that Erdogan will use them right away. With the issue of the referendum put aside Erdogan is now free to escalate interior and exterior conflicts. We can expect new Turkish operations in Syria as well as in Iraq to be launched soon.”
' Goodbye Turkey

Organized crime

A report by Europol in 2024 stated that during Erdogan’s 22-year time in office, Turkey has metamorphosed into a hub for significant criminal syndicates, posing a serious threat to the safety and security of Europe.

References