Gearing up for another election where he will helm the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party), President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan turned 70 on Monday. As customary, no party was held to celebrate the occasion, but Erdoğan received his birthday cake from his fervent supporters as he left his Istanbul residence to attend an opening ceremony in the city.
Prior to that, his foreign counterparts and other prominent names phoned Erdoğan to congratulate him. Among them were Russian President Vladimir Putin, Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev and Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, as well as Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis.
The president’s supporters flocked to social media to celebrate the birthday under the hashtag “Reis of the people at 70,” using an affectionate nickname for Erdoğan, which roughly means “chief” in Turkish.
Born in 1954 in the Kasımpaşa neighborhood of Istanbul, Erdoğan was elected mayor of the city years later after a political career in the Welfare Party (RP) and the National Salvation Party (MSP). His election was a turning point in the political life of Erdoğan, who had already made his mark on the political scene as a fiery orator in his youth. In the years he served as mayor, he turned around Istanbul’s fortunes after years of chronic problems, from water shortages to pollution and traffic chaos. His legacy as mayor helped propel him to the forefront in the 2002 elections, where his party won a landslide victory, the first in years after a long period of coalition governments. Since then, the AK Party has run the country after successive election victories. Erdoğan rose to the Presidency from the Prime Ministry in the past two decades and introduced the executive presidency system.
