page_title: Recep Tayyip Erdoğan
section_title: Syrian Civil War
hierarchical_section_title: Recep Tayyip Erdoğan / Presidency (2014–present) / Foreign policy / Syrian Civil War
caption_attribution_description: English: President Barack Obama hosts a meeting with President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdoğan during the NATO summit held in Newport, Wales, September 5, 2014. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, attended the meeting (not pictured). DoD Photo by Glenn Fawcett (Released) Türkçe: Türkiye Cumhurbaşkanı Recep Tayyip Erdoğan ve ABD Başkanı Barack Obama NATO zirvesi kapsamında ikili görüşme esnasında, Newport, Galler, Birleşik Krallık, 5 Eylül 2014. Amerika Birleşik Devletleri Savunma Bakanlığı (DOD) yayını.
context_page_description: Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is a Turkish politician serving as the 12th and current President of Turkey. He previously served as Prime Minister of Turkey from 2003 to 2014 and as Mayor of Istanbul from 1994 to 1998. He founded the Justice and Development Party in 2001, leading it to election victories in 2002, 2007, and 2011 before standing down upon his election as President in 2014. He later returned to the AKP leadership in 2017 following the constitutional referendum that year. Coming from an Islamist political background and as a self-described conservative democrat, he has promoted socially conservative and populist policies during his administration.
  Erdoğan played football for Kasımpaşa before being elected as the Mayor of Istanbul in 1994, as the candidate of the Islamist Welfare Party. He was later stripped of his position, banned from political office, and imprisoned for four months for inciting religious hatred, due to his recitation of a poem by Ziya Gökalp. Erdoğan subsequently abandoned openly Islamist politics, establishing the moderate conservative AKP in 2001, which he went on to lead to a landslide victory in 2002.
context_section_description: Amid false claims that the Turkish government funds IS fighters, several Kurdish demonstrations broke out near the Turkish-Syrian border in protest against the government's inactivity. These protests escalated during the fighting in the border town of Kobane, with 42 protestors being killed following a brutal police crackdown. Voicing concerns that aid to Kurdish fighters would assist PKK rebels in resuming terrorist attacks against Turkey, Erdoğan held bilateral talks with Barack Obama regarding IS during the 5–6 September 2014 NATO summit in Newport, Wales. In early October, United States Vice President Joe Biden accused Turkey of funding IS, to which Erdoğan angrily responded, "Biden has to apologize for his statements" adding that if no apology is made, Biden would become "history to me." Biden subsequently apologised. In response to the U.S. request to use İncirlik Air Base to conduct air strikes against IS, Erdoğan demanded that Bashar al-Assad be removed from power first. Turkey lost its bid for a Security Council seat in the United Nations during the 2014 election; the unexpected result is believed to have been a reaction to Erdoğan's hostile treatment of ethnic Kurds fighting ISIS on the Syrian border and a rebuke of his willingness to support IS-aligned insurgents opposed to Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.
  In 2015, amid consistent allegations that he maintained financial links with Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant militants, revelations that the state was supplying arms to militant groups in Syria in the 2014 National Intelligence Organisation lorry scandal led to accusations of high treason. In July 2015, Turkey became involved in the war against ISIS. The Turkish military has simultaneously launched airstrikes against Kurdistan Workers' Party bases in Iraq.
  As of 2015, Turkey is actively supporting the Army of Conquest, an umbrella Syrian rebel group that reportedly includes al-Nusra Front and Ahrar al-Sham. In late November 2016, Erdoğan said that the Turkish military launched its operations in Syria to end Assad's rule, but retracted his statement shortly afterwards.
  In January 2018, the Turkish military and its Free Syrian Army and Sham Legion allies began a cross-border operation in the Kurdish-majority Afrin Canton in Northern Syria, against the Kurdish-led Democratic Union Party (PYD) and the U.S.-supported YPG Kurdish militia. On 10 April, Erdoğan rebuked a Russian demand to return Afrin to Syrian government control.
  In October 2019, after Erdoğan spoke to U.S. President Donald Trump, the White House acknowledged that Turkey would be carrying out a planned military offensive into northern Syria; as such, U.S. troops in northern Syria were withdrawn from the area to avoid interference with that operation. After the U.S. pullout, Turkey proceeded to attack Kurdish-controlled areas in northeast Syria. Erdoğan claimed that NATO and European Union countries "sided with terrorists, and all of them attacked us".
caption: Erdoğan meeting U.S. President Barack Obama during the 2014 Wales summit in Newport, Wales
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