Abdullah Gül

Abdullah Gül is a Turkish economist and politician, the eleventh president of Turkey from 28 August 2007 to 28 August 2014, previously prime minister from November 2002 to March 2003 and foreign minister and deputy prime minister from 2003 to 2007. ^{1 2}

A co-founder of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) with Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in 2001, he was Turkey's first president with a background in Islamic politics. He came up through Necmettin Erbakan's movement, then led its "modernist" wing with Erdoğan, presenting their party as a moderate conservative party in the European tradition. ¹ He is currently a member of the Advisory Panel for the President of the Islamic Development Bank. ¹

Gül was born on 29 October 1950 in Kayseri, central Anatolia, on Republic Day, the 27th anniversary of the establishment of the modern Turkish nation; his father, Ahmet Hamdi Gül, was a retired air force mechanic, and his mother Adviye Satoğlu. ^{1 2}

He studied economics at Istanbul University, graduating in 1972, spent two years (1976–1978) in London and at the University of Exeter for doctoral research, returned in 1978 as an instructor in industrial engineering at Sakarya University, and received his PhD from Istanbul University in 1983 on Turkey's economic relations with other Muslim countries. ^{1 2} Between 1983 and 1991 he worked as an economist at the Islamic Development Bank in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. ¹

The Arabic article records that after the 1980 military coup he was arrested and held for several months in Istanbul's Metris prison over alleged membership of the "Sancak" group, and that among the writers who formed him were Cemil Meriç and the poet Necip Fazıl, whom he first met at an intellectual gathering in Kayseri through the "Great East Thought Club" of which he was a member. ²

Gül became acquainted with politics in his high-school years and at university joined the Islamist-nationalist National Turkish Students' Union, in the line of Necip Fazıl's Büyük Doğu (Grand Orient) current. ¹ He was elected MP for Kayseri in 1991 on the Welfare Party list, was re-elected in 1995, 1999, 2002 and 2007, and served as a minister of state in the 1996–1997 coalition government. ^{1 2}

Advocating staunch Islamist views in his university years, he made parliamentary statements including "This is the end of the republican period" and "The secular system has failed and we definitely want to change it", which caused controversy when his presidential candidacy was announced in 2007. ¹

When the Welfare Party was banned he joined the Virtue Party in 1998; when the party split in 2000 between hardline and modernist factions, Gül stood with Erdoğan for reform and ran against the veteran leader Recai Kutan for the leadership, losing narrowly with 521 votes to Kutan's 633. ¹ After the Virtue Party was shut down in 2001, he co-founded the AKP as a moderate conservative party in the European tradition, while the hardliners founded the Felicity Party. ¹ In a 2002 interview he summarised his break with the past: in the Welfare Party there were groups demanding sharia rule and an ideology partly shaped by foreign imports such as the Iranian Revolution, whereas "modernization and being Muslim complement each other". ¹

After the AKP's landslide victory in November 2002, Gül became prime minister because Erdoğan was still banned from politics; his government removed the ban by March 2003, Erdoğan entered parliament through the Siirt by-election and took over as prime minister, and Gül became deputy prime minister and foreign minister until 2007. ¹ His government also oversaw the 1 March motion seeking to authorise US forces to use Turkish territory in the 2003 Iraq War. ¹

As foreign minister, Gül became the key player in Turkey's attempts to receive an EU accession date, in improving relations with Syria and in maintaining ties with the Turkic-speaking countries of Central Asia and the Caucasus; on 8 January 2008 he met US President George W. Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in the United States. ¹

Erdoğan announced on 24 April 2007 that Gül was the AKP's presidential candidate; an opposition boycott deadlocked parliament, Gül withdrew on 6 May, snap elections followed in July, and the party renominated him on 13 August. ¹ On 28 August 2007 he was elected president in the third round of voting and sworn in immediately — the first president of Turkey with a background in Islamic politics, in what was described as a "new era in Turkish politics", while the chief of the general staff and the opposition CHP boycotted the ceremony. ¹

In September 2008 he became the first Turkish leader to visit Armenia, where he and President Serzh Sarkisian formulated a solution to the genocide question, but both parliaments refused to ratify the agreement. ¹ In November 2011 he led a state visit to the United Kingdom as a guest of Queen Elizabeth II. ¹ In November 2013, addressing the 29th COMCEC session in Istanbul, he called on Muslim countries to fight Islamophobia, describing Islam as "the religion of love, tolerance and conciliation". ¹

This section should be read as a presentation of differing positions reported in the sources, not as the museum's verdict on them.

His supporters: Supporters saw him as a mediating figure; during the Gezi Park protests and the government corruption scandals he took a mediating approach, and after leaving office he kept a long political silence, focusing on social and cultural issues and charity. ¹

His critics: As president he came under criticism for assenting to controversial laws the opposition regarded as unconstitutional: the June 2013 law restricting alcohol consumption, which he signed despite initially indicating a possible veto and which was seen as a factor in sparking the Gezi Park protests; a 2013 law tightening internet regulation; a 2014 law increasing political control over the judiciary, designed to protect then Prime Minister Erdoğan and others from corruption charges; and a 2014 law giving the National Intelligence Organization controversial new powers. ¹

After years of silence, and amid protests over the incarceration of Istanbul mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, attributed to President Erdoğan's initiative, Gül expressed support for İmamoğlu: "Let us remember how the public conscience did not accept the injustices that were once committed against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and me. Such mistakes should not be made against Ekrem Imamoglu, who was elected mayor by the people." ¹

After Israel's interdiction of the MV Mavi Marmara in 2010, Gül advocated the complete ending of diplomatic relations with Israel, stating that "Israel will turn into a complete apartheid regime in the next 50 years if it does not allow for the establishment of an independent and proud Palestinian state with its capital in east Jerusalem". ¹ On 31 December 2012 he wrote of the Arab Spring that "democracy is not only about elections", and that building the rule of law, accountability, gender equality and freedom of expression and faith still awaited those countries. ¹

Gül married Hayrünnisa Gül in 1980. This record notes no family detail beyond what understanding his public career requires. ²

Gül is the president who carried the Erdoğan camp from opposition to the summit of the state: he held the premiership while his party's leader was banned, ran foreign policy in the years of the European opening, and then became the first president from an Islamic-political background, afterwards remaining a rarely speaking reserve voice whose breaking of silence is itself news. ¹

• The defined sources cited above, registered in data/source/.
• Later translations and edits of this article require periodic review with clear update dates.