Recep Tayyip Erdogan was born on February 26, 1954 in Istanbul.
Having graduated from the Imam Khatib religious school in 1973, he enrolled in the Faculty of Economics and Management at the University of Marmara (Istanbul).
On graduating from University he spent a short time working as a consultant and manager in the private sector.
He first became involved in politics in the mid 1970s as a member of the religious Party of National Salvation (PNS), which followed the ideology of political Islam as developed by Mr Erbakan. He led the party's regional youth organisation.
In 1984 be became the head of a regional party organisation, and in 1985 he led the Istanbul-based organisation that was the intellectual successor to the PNS, the Welfare Party. Later he was elected to the Central Committee of the party.
He was elected Mayor of Istanbul in 1994, as a representative of the Welfare Party. This position allowed him to make the move into national politics. Mr Erdogan's emergence as a charismatic leader owes a great deal to this period.
In 1998 while Mayor, he was convicted under statute 312 of the Turkish Criminal Code, after reading a poem at a political demonstration, which the court interpreted as inflaming religious hatred. He spent four months in prison.
He lead the reformist wing of the Islamic political movement, which solidified into a formal party in August 2001 as the Party of Justice and Development.
Because of the restrictions placed on people with past political convictions, he was not able to participate in the Parliamentary elections of 2002, in which the party he leads won with the majority needed to form a Government. After changes to the laws in March 2003, he won a by-election in Siirt as their parliamentary representative, after which he headed the new cabinet of ministers.
After the Party of Justice and Development's success in the parliamentary elections on July 22, 2007 he again led the one party government, which received a parliamentary vote of confidence on September 5, 2007.
In youth he enjoyed football, and played for several semi-professional Istanbul clubs.
He is married with four adult children.
He speaks English and Arabic.