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Childhood Years and Youth
Childhood Years and Youth
Recep Tayyip Erdoan was born in Kasmpaa, a poor neighborhood of Istanbul. His family was originally from Rize,[1] a conservative town on the northeastern coast of the Black Sea, and
returned there when Erdoan was still an infant, coming back to Istanbul again when he was 13. He spent those years attending Istanbul mam Hatip school and selling lemonade and simit
(sesame rings) on the city's streets to make extra money.[2]
While studying business administration at what is today Marmara University's Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences and playing semi-professional football,[3] Erdoan also
engaged in politics by joining the National Turkish Student Union, an anti-communist action group. In 1976, he became the head of a local youth branch of the Islamist National Salvation
Party (MSP), led by Necmettin Erbakan, who would later go on to found the Felicity Party. This was the beginning of Erdoan's long career in politics.[4]
Mayor of Istanbul
After the 1980 coup, Erbakan's movement regrouped under the Welfare Party (RP), and Erdoan gradually became one of its stars. In 1991, Erdoan became a candidate for Parliament on the
party's ticket and won a seat, only to be kept from taking it on a technicality.
In 1994, Erdoan was elected Mayor of Istanbul to the shock of the city's more secular citizens, who thought he would ban alcohol and impose Islamic law. Instead, he emerged over the next
four years as a pragmatic mayor who tackled many chronic problems in the city, including pollution, water shortages and traffic.[5]
Meanwhile, the political environment was growing tense in Turkey, as the Welfare Party came to power in June 1996 in a coalition government with the center-right True Path Party (DYP). RP
head Necmettin Erbakan, who became Turkey's first openly Islamist prime minister, conflicted with the principle of the separation of religion and state in Turkey with his radical rhetoric. Six
months later, in February 1997, the military initiated what was later dubbed the "post-modern coup".[6] Soon, Erbakan was ousted from power and many Islamist groups were the subject of a
crackdown as part of a series of court cases opened by prosecutors.[7]
Erdoan was caught up in this crackdown in 1997, when he made a public speech in the southeastern province of Siirt denouncing the closure of his party and recited these lines of a poem
from the Turkish War of Liberation: "The mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets and the faithful our soldiers."
A court held that this speech was an attack on the government and Islamist rhetoric, and sentenced Erdoan in September 1998 to a 10-month prison term, of which he served four months. He
was also banned from holding political office for life. "Erdoan's political career is over," some mainstream newspapers wrote at the time. "From now on, he can't even be a local governor." [8]
References
1.
"BABAKAN ERDOAN "GRC" ASILLI MI!". Retrieved 2010-10-31.
"Turkey's charismatic pro-Islamic leader". BBC News. 2004-11-08. Retrieved 2009-11-12.
"Erdoan'n futbol oynad yllar". Haber3 (in Turkish). 2011-01-01. Retrieved 2011-01-16.
1.
"The making of Turkey's prime minister". Hrriyet Daily News. 2010-10-31. Retrieved 2010-10-31.
"Recep Tayyip Erdoan - World Leaders Forum". Columbia University. 2008-11-13. Retrieved 2010-10-31.
"Turkey and the art of the coup". Reuters. 2008-07-09. Retrieved 2010-12-21.
"In Defense Of Secularism, Turkish Army Warns Rulers". The New York Times. 1997-03-02. Retrieved 2011-01-18.
"Muhtar bile olamaz". Radikal (in Turkish). 1998-09-24. Retrieved 1998-09-24. Check date values in: |access-date= (help)
"The Erdogan Experiment". The New York Times. 2003-05-11. Retrieved 2010-09-21.
"Turkey: AKP leader Erdogan wins by-election in Siirt". wsws.org. 2003-03-15. Retrieved 2010-12-12.
External links