Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is the 12th President of Turkey. He formerly served as the Prime Minister of Turkey and was also the Mayor of İstanbul. He is the founder of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) and led it to three general election victories. He has an Islamist political background. He is an extremely polarized figure. Supporters say that his government has introduced several liberal economic reforms, improved Turkish economy, lifted restrictions on religious expressions and ended Guerilla war with the Kurdish mass. He was able to curb the political power of military through the ‘Sledgehammer’ and ‘Ergenekon’ court cases. However, his administration has faced criticism for being autocratic, which led to anti-government protests and deaths of protestors. Erdoğan and his allies were linked to a US$100 billion government corruption scandal. Since then Erdoğan's government has attacked social media, press, human rights and even blocked access to Twitter, Facebook and other social networking sites several times. He has been accused of maintaining monetary connections with Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant militants when it was revealed that Turkey had been delivering weapons to Syrian military groups.