Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (born 26 February 1954) is a Turkish politician who has been the president of Turkey since 2014. He previously served as the 25th prime minister from 2003 to 2014 as part of the Justice and Development Party (AKP), which he co-founded in 2001. He also served as mayor of Istanbul from 1994 to 1998. Coming from an Islamist background and promoting socially conservative policies, Turkey has experienced increasing authoritarianism, democratic backsliding and suppression of dissent under Erdoğan's rule.

Erdoğan was born in Beyoğlu, Istanbul, and studied at the Aksaray Academy of Economic and Commercial Sciences, before working as a consultant and senior manager in the private sector. Becoming active in local politics, he was elected Welfare Party's Beyoğlu district chair in 1984 and Istanbul chair in 1985. Following the 1994 local elections, Erdoğan was elected mayor of Istanbul. In 1998 he was convicted for inciting religious hatred and banned from politics after reciting a poem by Ziya Gökalp that compared mosques to barracks and the faithful to an army. Erdoğan was released from prison in 1999 and formed the AKP, abandoning openly Islamist policies.

Erdoğan led the AKP to a landslide victory in the election for the Grand National Assembly in 2002, and became prime minister after winning a by-election in Siirt in 2003. Erdoğan led the AKP to two more election victories in 2007 and 2011. His tenure consisted of economic recovery from the economic crisis of 2001, the start of EU membership negotiations, and the reduction of military influence on politics. In late 2012, his government began peace negotiations with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) to end the Kurdish–Turkish conflict, negotiations which ended three years later.

In 2014, Erdoğan became the country's first directly elected president. Erdoğan's presidency has been marked by democratic backsliding and a shift towards a more authoritarian style of government. His economic policies have led to high inflation rates and the depreciation of the value of the Turkish lira. He has intervened in the ongoing conflicts in Syria and Libya, launched operations against the Islamic State, Syrian Democratic Forces and Assad's forces leading to the fall of the Assad regime, and has made threats against Greece. He oversaw the transformation of Turkey's parliamentary system into a presidential system, introducing term limits and expanding executive powers, and Turkey's migrant crisis. In May 2022, Erdoğan temporarily blocked Finland and Sweden from joining NATO. Erdoğan responded to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine by closing the Bosphorus to Russian naval reinforcements, brokering a deal between Russia and Ukraine regarding the export of grain, and mediating a prisoner exchange.

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was born on 26 February 1954 in Kasımpaşa, Beyoğlu to a poor conservative Muslim family. Erdoğan's family is originally from Adjara, a region in Georgia. Although Erdoğan was reported to have said in 2003 that he was of Georgian origin and that his origins were in Batumi, he later denied this. His parents were Ahmet Erdoğan (1905–1988) and Tenzile Erdoğan (née Mutlu; 1924–2011).

While Erdoğan attended school in Istanbul, his summer holidays were mostly spent in Güneysu, Rize, where his family originates from. Throughout his life he often returned to this spiritual home, and in 2015 he opened a vast mosque on a mountaintop near this village. The family returned to Istanbul when Erdoğan was 13 years old.

As a teenager, Erdoğan's father provided him with a weekly allowance of 2.5 Turkish lira, less than a dollar. With it, Erdoğan bought postcards and resold them on the street. He sold bottles of water to drivers stuck in traffic. Erdoğan also worked as a street vendor selling simit (sesame bread rings), wearing a white gown and selling the simit from a red three-wheel cart with the rolls stacked behind glass. In his youth, Erdoğan played semi-professional football in Camialtıspor FC, a local club. Fenerbahçe wanted him to transfer to the club^{[clarification needed]} but his father prevented it. The stadium of the local football club in the district where he grew up, Kasımpaşa S.K. is named after him.

Erdoğan is a member of the Community of İskenderpaşa, a Turkish Sufistic community of Naqshbandi tariqah.