Recep Tayyip Erdoğan

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan
Born	1954-02-26 Istanbul, Turkey
Alma mater	Marmara University
Religion	Sunni Islam
Children	• Ahmet Burak • Sümeyye • Bilal • Esra
Spouse	Emine Gülbaran
Member of	The European House - Ambrosetti
Party	National Salvation Party, Welfare Party, Virtue Party, Justice and Development Party
President of Turkey  In office 28 August 2014 - Present Preceded by Abdullah Gul  Prime Minister of Turkey  In office 14 March 2003 - 28 August 2014 Deputy Ali Babacan, Abdullah Gul Preceded by Abdullah Gul  Leader of the Justice and Development Party In office 14 August 2001 - 27 August 2014  Mayor of Istanbul In office 27 March 1994 - 6 November 1998  Member of the Grand National Assembly In office 9 March 2003 - 28 August 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. Since taking over as President in August 2014, Erdogan's opponents have accused him of repeatedly exceeding his powers.

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:

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.

In the 1990s I extensively traveled in Turkey - alone, by local buses and mostly in the east. The country was waking up and in an intellectual and commercial growing phase. During the last years a new wave of conservatism has stopped that move. My friends there report of stagnation.

Turkey does not have the economic and intellectual power to become a new Ottoman Reich. It will fail in new expansive endeavors. But the attempt alone will be destructive for Turkey as well as for the countries around it.

Turkey is no longer a democracy. It is now a one man dictatorship with an expansive and distinct Islamist agenda. To change that will require the removal of Erdogan through some act of force.

 

Events Participated in

Event	Start	End	Location(s)	Description
WEF/Annual Meeting/2006	25 January 2006	29 January 2006	Switzerland	Both former US president Bill Clinton and Bill Gates pushed for public-private partnerships. Only a few of the over 2000 participants are known.
WEF/Annual Meeting/2008	23 January 2008	27 January 2008	World Economic Forum Switzerland	At the 2008 summit, Klaus Schwab called for a coordinated approach, where different 'stakeholders' collaborate across geographical, industrial, political and cultural boundaries."
WEF/Annual Meeting/2009	23 January 2009	27 January 2009	World Economic Forum Switzerland	Chairman Klaus Schwab outlined five objectives driving the Forum’s efforts to shape the global agenda, including letting the banks that caused the 2008 economic crisis keep writing the rules, the climate change agenda, over-national government structures, taking control over businesses with the stakeholder agenda, and a "new charter for the global economic order".

 

Related Documents

Title	Type	Publication date	Author(s)	Description
Document:Is Perfidious Erdogan Destroying Russia for The Great Turan	Article	23 January 2022	William Engdahl
Document:Open Letter to Erdogan	open letter	30 March 2016	Elliott Abrams John Hannah Michael Rubin Paul Wolfowitz Paula Dobriansky Eric Edelman Robert Kagan Joshua Muravchik Randy Scheunemann Robert Ford Joe Lieberman Paul Bremer James Denton Dennis Ross Anne-Marie Slaughter Max Boot Kenneth Weinstein Frank Loy Morton Abramowitz Aykan Erdemir Douglas Feith	Open letter from a number of neocon deep state actors warning Turkish Prime Minister Erdoğan to change his ways. The letter was published three months before the failed 2016 Turkish coup d'état attempt.
Document:Speech by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on 20 August 2017 to the Syrian Diplomatic Corps	Speech	31 August 2017	Bashar al Assad	The US President is not the maker of policies, but the executor. Therefore, the “Deep State” in the United States does not govern in partnership with the President, but leaves him a small margin.

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