Can Turkey be saved?
Istanbul's fiercely fought mayoral election could decide the country's political future.
ByRecep Tayyip Erdoğan
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been president of Turkey since 2014. He had been prime minister from 2003 to 2014, during which time he was seen as a socially conservative economic reformer; he comes from an Islamist political background and under his rule the secularist influence of the military on the country has decreased. At the time Erdoğan, born in 1954, became president the role was supposedly ceremonial but he has since switched Turkey from a parliamentary to a presidential system of government, and become increasingly authoritarian, restricting opposition parties and expanding censorship.
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