By FARRAG ISMAIL<\/p>\n
Al Arabiya<\/p>\n
When I met Recep Tayyip Erdogan in 1994 in his office, he was the mayor of Istanbul. Along one whole hour during which I stayed with him, in the presence of the Turkish Islamist Sheikh Saleh Uzgan\u2014who was at the time the president of Faisal Ismalic Bank in Turkey\u2014, I haven\u2019t felt that he might one day become the founder of a political party that would later become the \u201cforbidden love\u201d dreamt of by the Arabs in the aftermath of their Spring revolutions.<\/p>\n Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan (L), Farrag Ismail (C) and Turkish Islamist Sheikh Saleh Uzgan.<\/p>\n The editor-in-chief of the newspaper that I worked in at the time did not like the big area that I had dedicated for the interview. He thought that it was too large for him\u2014as an unknown person\u2014despite his post at that time. I had to shorten it. Neither I nor he had the slightest idea that he would turn out to become Turkey\u2019s star, who will become the winner\u2014for the third time\u2014of the latest legislative elections.<\/p>\n Erdogan became the beloved star of the Arabs, especially the Islamists eyeing authority. He has become a good model for the Islamist movements that started to give up\u2014or already gave up\u2014their strictness and stands towards democracy and ballot boxes.<\/p>\n At that time, Sheikh Saleh Uzgan told me that Mr. \u201cErdodan will excel over his own mentor\u2014the late leader of Al Rafah Party Najm Al Din Arabakan,\u201d and that it was best for me \u201cto get acquainted with his thoughts.\u201d However, I never imagined that his prophesy would be accomplished that much.<\/p>\n As much as thousands of Arabs sit in front of the TV satellite channels awaiting the Turkish soap opera \u201cThe Forbidden Love,\u201d they similarly awaited last Sunday, June 12, for the results of the legislative election in which the Justice and Development Party (AKP)\u2014led by Erdogan\u2014was declared the winner.<\/p>\n That man who has Brotherhood roots and his party\u2014that was not founded long ago\u2014is now seen as the dreamt-of regime expected by Egypt for example.<\/p>\n Even the Coptic billionaire Naguib Sawiris\u2014the founder of Free Egyptians Party after the January 25 Revolution\u2014revealed that he said to himself \u201cthis is the Islam that we want in Egypt\u201d when he visited Turkey and was impressed by its renaissance.<\/p>\n Mr. Erdogan is aware of this impression and that\u2019s why he included the Arab world in his speech following the winning of his party: \u201cThe victory belongs to Istanbul and Jerusalem, to Ankara and Syria, to Izmir and Beirut, to Bursa and Baghdad, to Diar Baker, Ramallah, Jenin, Bethlehem, Gaza and all the neighboring countries.\u201d<\/p>\n A two thirds majority (367 seats) enables the AKP to demand laying the new constitution, but it did not get that number of seats. Its seats retreated\u2014despite its sounding popularity\u2014by 49.9% to around 326 seats, which is less than the 341 seats that it had in the previous parliament.<\/p>\n It is widely believed that such retreat is due to the coalitions\u2014especially between the opposition Republican People\u2019s Party and the Kurds\u2014but some think that it is a kind of smartness to achieve a kind of balance among the political powers, because the new constitution is a matter of destiny that shouldn\u2019t be controlled by one party only, regardless of its big popularity.<\/p>\n Thus, Mr. Erdogan would be in need of concurrence with other parties in the parliament, which is possible, especially that the Republican People\u2019s Party\u2014which is the main opposition that won 25.99%\u2014had included this suggestion in its election campaign.<\/p>\n Some people think that the AKP aims at getting rid of secularism in the suggested new constitution, which has been also underlined in the election campaign of the opposition parties, but this is not true. During his previous term, his party set up a draft that does not approach the secular system\u2014approved by all the Turkish powers\u2014but its main target is the liabilities granted within the framework of the current constitution to legislative associations, judiciary system, army and education. That is what the AKP wants to get rid of.<\/p>\n Mr. Erdogan was born on February 26, 1954, in Qassim Pasha Neighborhood\u2014the poorest in Istanbul\u2014and he was nicknamed \u2018Sheikh Recep\u2019 during his elementary education because he refused to lead his colleagues in the prayers over a newspaper that contained photos of women.<\/p>\n He graduated at the \u201cImam Khatib\u201d school, which was the most famous Islamic education school in Turkey. After his successful graduation from high school, he joined the Ministry of Economics in Marmara University. He also spent around 10 years playing football at a sporting club.<\/p>\n When the Islamist Fadeela (Virtue) Party was dissolved and divided into two parts: a conservative part and a youthful part led by Mr. Erdogan and the current Turkish President Abdullah Gul, who later founded the Justice and Development Party (AKP) in 2001.<\/p>\n He is married to Mrs. Ameena, who is of Arab origin, and who was a member of the National Islamist Salamat Party. Both of them formed a marvelous Islamist \u201cduet.\u201d<\/p>\n He named his son Najm Al Din, after the name of his mentor Najm Al Din Arbakan. As for his daughter Sumaya, she got her education in the United States because she was not permitted to study in Turkey due to her Islamic hijab (veil.)<\/p>\n (Farrag Ismail is the Editorial Manager of AlArabiya.net, he can be reached at: farrag.ismail@mbc.net)<\/p>\n via Insight \/ Farrag Ismail: Meeting the unknown Sheikh Erdogan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By FARRAG ISMAIL Al Arabiya When I met Recep Tayyip Erdogan in 1994 in his office, he was the mayor of Istanbul. Along one whole hour during which I stayed with him, in the presence of the Turkish Islamist Sheikh Saleh Uzgan\u2014who was at the time the president of Faisal Ismalic Bank in Turkey\u2014, I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":783349,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[89],"tags":[1018],"class_list":["post-35883","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-turkey","tag-recep-tayyip-erdogan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35883","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35883"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35883\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/783349"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}