Recep Tayyip Erdoğan

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (Turkish pronunciation: [ɾeˈd͡ʒep tajˈjip ˈæɾdo.an]; born 26 February 1954) is the 12th and current President of Turkey, in office since 2014. He previously served as the Prime Minister of Turkey from 2003 to 2014 and as the Mayor of İstanbul from 1994 to 1998. He founded the Justice and Development Party (AKP) in 2001 and led it to three general election victories in 2002, 2007 and 2011 before standing down as leader upon his election as President in 2014. Originating from an Islamist political background and as a self-described conservative democrat, his administration has overseen social conservative and liberal economic policies.

Educated in an Imam Hatip school, Erdoğan was a semi-professional footballer playing for Kasımpaşa Spor Kulübü and was involved in Islamist political movements as a student before being elected as the Mayor of İstanbul from the Islamist Welfare Party in 1994. He was banned form office and sentenced to 10 months in prison for religious intolerance in 1998 and later abandoned openly Islamist politics, establishing the moderate conservative AKP in 2001. Winning just short of a two-thirds parliamentary majority in the 2002 general election, the party's co-founder Abdullah Gül became Prime Minister until his government annulled Erdoğan's ban from political office. Erdoğan subsequently became Prime Minister in March 2003 after winning a seat in a by-election held in Siirt.

Turkish language

Turkish ( Türkçe ), also referred to as Istanbul Turkish, is the most widely spoken of the Turkic languages, with around 10–15 million native speakers in Southeast Europe (mostly in East Thrace) and 60-65 million native speakers in Western Asia (mostly in Anatolia). Outside of Turkey, smaller groups of speakers exist in Germany, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Northern Cyprus (although a partially recognized state), Greece, the Caucasus, and other parts of Europe and Central Asia.

To the west, the influence of Ottoman Turkish—the variety of the Turkish language that was used as the administrative and literary language of the Ottoman Empire—spread as the Ottoman Empire expanded. In 1928, as one of Atatürk's Reforms in the early years of the Republic of Turkey, the Ottoman Turkish alphabet was replaced with a Latin script.

The distinctive characteristics of Turkish are vowel harmony and extensive agglutination. The basic word order of Turkish is subject–object–verb. Turkish has no noun classes or grammatical gender. Turkish has a strong T–V distinction and usage of honorifics. Turkish uses second-person pronouns that distinguish varying levels of politeness, social distance, age, courtesy or familiarity toward the addressee. The plural second-person pronoun and verb forms are used referring to a single person out of respect.

Uğur Işılak

Ugur Isilak (born 15 November 1971, Neviges, Germany) is a Turkish musician, a composer and politician.

With the general elections in Turkey, which was held on 7 June 2015, he became a member of 25th term of the Turkish Parliament for Istanbul Province of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party).

Early years

He completed his primary, secondary and high school education in Germany. After that he began to live in İstanbul.

He graduated from Konya/ Selçuk University’s Literature Faculty. His hometown is Şereflikoçhisar, Ankara.

He has begun to his musical life as a professional musician since 1987.

He has gone in for more than a thousand cultural and art activities in Turkey, Europe, America, Australia and Central Asia for almost 30 years.

He made more than 20 records (albums).

Among these, there are very important and special albums which were compiled and composed from important Turkish poets like Necip Fazıl Kısakürek, Mehmet Akif Ersoy, Kanuni Sultan Süleyman ( Süleyman the Magnificent) and Yavuz Sultan Selim. These poets (which includes Ottoman Empires) are in Turkey’s 1000 years literature history.He was granted many awards for his cultural studies.

Reza Zarrab

Reza Zarrab (Persian: رضا ضراب‎‎, Turkish: Rıza Sarraf; 1983 in Tabriz) is a Turkey-based businessman. He holds Iranian, Turkish and Azerbaijani citizenship.

Early life

Zarrab was born in Tabriz to Iranian Azerbaijani parents and grew up in Turkey. He became a dual citizen of Iran and Turkey after settling in Istanbul.

2013 corruption scandal in Turkey

Zarrab, who has business affiliation with the Iranian tycoon Babak Zanjani, was detained in Istanbul on 17 December 2013 due to his involvement with the sons of three ministers (Erdoğan Bayraktar, Muammer Güler and Zafer Çağlayan) in the Turkish government and Egemen Bagis, the former minister for EU Affairs and Turkey's chief negotiator in accession talks with the European Union, in an alleged bribery, corruption and smuggling racket. The court ordered his arrest on 21 December along with Barış Güler, son of Muammer Güler, and Kaan Çağlayan, son of Zafer Çağlayan. He was released on 28 February 2014.

Personal life

Zarrab is married to the Turkish singer Ebru Gündeş. They have one child together.

Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu

Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu (pronounced [keˈmal kɯɫɯtʃˈdaɾoːɫu]; born 17 December 1948) is a Turkish politician. He is leader of the Republican People's Party (CHP) and has been Leader of the Main Opposition in Turkey since 2010. He served as a Member of Parliament for İstanbul's second electoral district from 2002 to 2015 and as an MP for İzmir's second electoral district as of 7 June 2015.

Before entering politics, Kılıçdaroğlu was a civil servant and served as the President of the Social Insurance Institution (SSK) from 1992 to 1996 and again from 1997 to 1999. He was elected to Parliament in the 2002 general election and became the CHP's parliamentary group leader. In the 2009 local elections, he was nominated as the CHP candidate for the Mayor of İstanbul and lost to the Justice and Development Party (AKP) with 37% of the vote, where the candidate from the Justice and Development Party got 44.71% of the votes. He was elected deputy chairman of the Socialist International on August 31, 2012.