Abdullah Gül

His father is Ahmet Hamdi Gül (1926–2017), a retired air force mechanic whilst his mother is Adviye Satoğlu (born 1931), who is of Arab descent.

Gül studied Economics at Istanbul University.

Abdullah Gül (born 29 October 1950) is a Turkish politician who served as the 11th president of Turkey, in office from 2007 to 2014.

Gül was born in Kayseri, central Anatolia on 29 October 1950, the 27th anniversary of the proclamation of Turkish independence, also known as Republic Day in Turkey.

During his graduate education, he spent two years (1976–1978) in London and studied at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom.

Returning to Turkey in 1978, he became an instructor in the Department of Industrial Engineering at Sakarya University while working on his doctoral research on Turkey's economic relations with other Muslim countries.

He received his PhD from Istanbul University in 1983.

Between 1983 and 1991, he worked at the Islamic Development Bank (IDB) in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

Advocating staunch Islamist political views during his university years, Gül became a Member of Parliament for Kayseri in 1991 and was re-elected in 1995, 1999, 2002 and 2007.

He was elected a member of the Turkish parliament for the Refah Partisi (RP, "the Welfare Party") from the Kayseri electoral district in 1991 and 1995.

During these years, he made statements about the political system of Turkey that was designed by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and the Turkish National Movement, which included "This is the end of the republican period" and "The secular system has failed and we definitely want to change it".

Since 1993 in Ankara, he had been organizing an informal think-tank involving a group of Refah politicians who were discontented with the leadership of Necmettin Erbakan: these included Melih Gökçek, Bülent Arınç, Abdüllatif Şener, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Beşir Atalay.

Initially a member of the Islamist Welfare Party, Gül joined the Virtue Party in 1998 after the former was banned for anti-secular activities.

In 1999, he kept his seat as a member of the Fazilet Partisi (FP, "the Virtue Party") which was subsequently outlawed by the Constitutional Court for its violation of the Constitution.

Its predecessor, the Refah Partisi, was also outlawed by the Constitutional Court for its violation of the Constitution, especially the principle of secularism.

By this time, Gül had apparently moderated his views and was reportedly considered to be part of the Virtue Party's reformist faction.

When the party split into hardline Islamist and modernist factions in 2000, Gül joined fellow party member Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in advocating the need for reform and moderation.

He ran against serving leader Recai Kutan for the Virtue Party leadership at a time when Erdoğan was banned from holding political office.

As the candidate for the modernist camp, he came second with 521 votes while Kutan won 633.

He co-founded the moderate Justice and Development Party (AKP) with Erdoğan in 2001 after the Virtue Party was shut down in the same year, while hardline conservative members founded the Felicity Party instead.

In August 2001, this group founded the Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi (Justice and Development Party), a party which billed itself as a moderate conservative party in the European tradition.

He previously served for four months as Prime Minister from 2002 to 2003, and concurrently served as both Deputy Prime Minister and as Foreign Minister between 2003 and 2007.

He is currently a member of the Advisory Panel for the President of the Islamic Development Bank.

Gül became Prime Minister after the AKP won a landslide victory in the 2002 general election while Erdoğan was still banned from office.

His government removed Erdoğan's political ban by March 2003, after which Erdoğan became an MP for Siirt in a by-election and took over as Prime Minister.

Gül subsequently served as Minister of Foreign Affairs and Deputy Prime Minister until 2007.

His subsequent bid for the Presidency drew strong and highly vocal opposition from ardent supporters of secularism in Turkey and was initially blocked by the Constitutional Court due to concerns over his Islamist political background.

He was eventually elected Turkey's first President with a background in Islamic politics after the 2007 snap general election.

As President, Gül came under criticism for giving assent to controversial laws which have been regarded by the political opposition as unconstitutional.

These statements caused controversy when his candidacy for the 2007 presidential election was announced by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

He was conferred an honorary PhD degree from Amity University, Noida on 8 February 2009, and a LL.D from the University of Dhaka on 13 February 2010.

Gül became acquainted with politics early during his high school years.

During his university education, he became a member of the Islamist-nationalist Millî Türk Talebe Birliği (National Turkish Students' Union) in the line of Necip Fazıl's Büyük Doğu (Grand Orient) current.

In June 2013, he signed a bill restricting alcohol consumption into law despite initially indicating a possible veto, which was seen as a contributing factor to sparking the Gezi Park protests.

Other controversies included a law tightening internet regulation in 2013, a law increasing political control over the judiciary in 2014 designed to protect then Prime Minister Erdoğan and others from corruption charges and a law giving the National Intelligence Organization (MİT) controversial new powers also in 2014.

Gül took a mediating approach during the Gezi Park anti-government protests and government corruption scandals.

Since leaving office, Gül has progressively become more publicly critical of his successor, Erdoğan, and the democratic backsliding in Turkey.

He was mooted as a potential joint opposition candidate in the 2018 Turkish presidential election, initially supported by the Republican People's Party (CHP) and the Felicity Party (SP).

However, having failed to gain the support of the third major opposition party, namely the Good Party, Gül announced that he had taken his name out of consideration due to the lack of universal opposition-backing.

He has since been involved, though not officially, with the Democracy and Progress Party (DEVA) of fellow former AKP member Ali Babacan.