Candidats à l'élection présidentielle du 10 août 2014

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan Justice and Development Party
(AK Party) Chairman

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was born on Feb. 26, 1954 in the Kasımpaşa district of Istanbul. Erdoğan, also renowned for his sportsmanship, played amateur football from 1969 to 1982. He was involved in the National Turkish Student Association since high school, and started his active political career in the National Salvation Party (MSP). He was first elected as chairman of Beyoğlu Youth Branches and then chairman of Istanbul Youth Branches.
He joined the army as a reserve officer in 1982. In 1984, he became the Welfare Party’s (RP) Beyoğlu District Chairman, and its Istanbul Provincial Chairman the following year. He also became a member of the Central Management Board (MYK) for the RP. In local elections held in 1989, he ran for for mayor of Beyoğlu. Despite being elected as a member of Parliament in 1991, he could not enter Parliament because of the obstacle posed by preferential voting. In the local elections held on March 27, 1994, he was elected as Istanbul Mayor. He was sentenced to 10 months in prison for a poem he read on Dec. 12, 1997, and was released from the Kırıkkale Pınarhisar Prison on July 24, 1999.
Founding the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) on Aug. 14, 2001, he was elected Chairman by the Founders' Council. He could not be a deputy candidate in the Nov. 3, 2002 elections due to the fact that he was banned from holding political office. On March 9, 2003, he entered the Grand National Assembly with by-elections held in Siirt. With the resignation of Abdullah Gül on March 15, 2003, he became prime minister. His party won the general elections held on March 28, 2004, July 22, 2007, March 29, 2009, June 12, 2011, and March 30, 2014.
He became the first president elected by popular vote in the presidential elections held in 2014. Erdoğan, who is the 13th president of the Turkish Republic, became a joint candidate of the People’s Alliance for the June 24th elections.

Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu -

Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu was born on Dec. 26, 1943, in Egypt’s Cairo. After graduating from Hıdiviye High School, he received a university degree from the Science Faculty of the Ain Shams University. During his university years, he started cataloguing Turkish written and printed books at the Egypt National Library.
He graduated in 1966 and started post-graduate studies at Al-Azhar University. During his post-graduate studies, he worked as an assistant at Al-Azhar University and as a lecturer of Turkish Literature at Ain Shams University’s Faculty of Literature. He came to Turkey in 1970 and started working at Ankara University. He married pharmacist Füsün Bilgiç in 1972, and became the father of three children. In 1974, after completing his PhD at Ankara University’s Science Faculty, he conducted post-doctoral studies at Exeter University in England.
In 1980, he was elected to the presidency of the Research Centre for Islamic History, Art and Culture (IRCICA) established in Istanbul upon the recommendation of the Organization for Islamic Cooperation (OIC). He remained in this position for 25 years.
He became a professor of the Science Faculty at Istanbul University in 1984. He founded the university’s the Department of Science History. Aside from his IRCICA and university roles, he was also the chairman of the Turkish Science Historical Society and director of the Istanbul University Science History Museum and Documentation Center.
He was Turkey’s candidate for the position of general secretary of the OIC at the conference held in Istanbul from June 4-16, 2004. He became the first elected general secretary, and the first Turkish general secretary.
He was chosen as the Republican People's Party’s (CHP) joint presidential candidate in the Aug. 10, 2014, elections. He was awarded with the State Medal for Distinguished Service.

Selahattin Demirtaş Peoples’ Democratic Party
(HDP) Chairman

Selahattin Demirtaş was born in 1973 in Turkey’s southern province of Diyarbakır, where he attended primary and secondary school. After graduating from high school, Demirtaş enrolled at the School of Maritime Business and Management at Dokuz Eylül University. After studying for two years here, he had to drop out due to political reasons. He retook the university entrance exam and started his higher education at Ankara University’s Faculty of Law and moved to the capital city. After graduating from the Faculty of Law, he worked as a self-employed lawyer for a while.
He then worked in management for Diyarbakır Branch of the Human Rights Association. After Osman Baydemir, the Human Rights Association Chairman at the time, was elected as mayor, Demirtaş replaced him as chairman. During Demirtaş’s chairmanship, the association followed a policy that cracked down on unsolved murders. In the same period, he was among the founders of the Human Rights Foundation of Turkey and of the Diyarbakır Branch of Amnesty International.
In 2007, Demirtaş served as deputy chairman for the Democrat Society Party (DTP). After the party was shut down, he joined the newly-founded Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) and was elected chairman at the party's first extraordinary congress held on Feb. 1, 2010.
In the process when the BDP merged with the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), Demirtaş and Figen Yüksekdağ were elected co-chairpersons in the Second Extraordinary Congress held in 2014. He entered Parliament as a deputy for Diyarbakır in general elections held in 2007, for Hakkari in 2011 and for Istanbul in June 2015. On Nov. 4, 2016, Demirtaş, along with HDP Co-Chair Figen Yüksekdağ and nine members of parliament from the HDP, were arrested on charges of "establishing an organization with the goal of committing a crime," "being a member of terrorist organization," "being a member of an armed terrorist organization,” and “committing crime on behalf of an organization” and sent to the Edirne F-type prison.