page_title: Recep Tayyip Erdoğan
section_title: Egypt
hierarchical_section_title: Recep Tayyip Erdoğan / Premiership (2003–2014) / Foreign policy / Egypt
caption_attribution_description: English: A "family" photo at the G-8 summit in L'Aquila, Italy, July 9, 2009. First rank: Silvio Berlusconi, Giorgio Napolitano (president of Italy), Nicolas Sarkozy, Barack Obama, Meles Zenawi (second row), Lula, Hosni Mubarak (back) and Muammar Gaddafi.
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: Erdoğan had made his first official visit to Egypt on 12 September 2011, accompanied by six ministers and 200 businessmen. This visit was made very soon after Turkey had ejected Israeli ambassadors, cutting off all diplomatic relations with Israel because Israel refused to apologize for the Gaza flotilla raid which killed eight Turkish and one Turco-American.
  Erdoğan's visit to Egypt was met with much enthusiasm by Egyptians. CNN reported some Egyptians saying "We consider him as the Islamic leader in the Middle East", while others were appreciative of his role in supporting Gaza. Erdoğan was later honored in Tahrir Square by members of the Egyptian Revolution Youth Union, and members of the Turkish embassy were presented with a coat of arms in acknowledgment of the Prime Minister's support of the Egyptian Revolution.
  Erdoğan stated in a 2011 interview that he supported secularism for Egypt, which generated an angry reaction among Islamic movements, especially the Freedom and Justice party – the political wing of the Muslim Brotherhood. However, commentators suggest that by forming an alliance with the military junta during Egypt's transition to democracy, Erdoğan may have tipped the balance in favor of an authoritarian government.
  Erdoğan condemned Egypt's Rabaa massacre, which took place on August 14, 2013, when Egyptian security forces killed over 1000 people during the violent dispersal of mass anti-government sit-ins at Cairo's Rabaa al-Adawiya and al-Nahda squares. In July 2014, one year after the removal of Mohammed Morsi from office, Erdoğan described Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi as an "illegitimate tyrant".
caption: Erdoğan and Hosni Mubarak are among the world leaders seen here at the G8 summit in 2009.
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