Government > Leaders Stats: compare key data on Israel & Turkey

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STAT	Israel	Turkey	HISTORY
Head of state > Term limit for head of state	7 Ranked 7th. 40% more than Turkey	5 Ranked 110th.
President	Shimon Peres	Abdullah Gul
President > Profile	<p>The Israeli president has a mainly ceremonial role; executive power is vested in the cabinet, headed by the prime minister. </p> <p>On 13 June 2007, the Israeli parliament chose the veteran politician Shimon Peres to succeed Moshe Katsav, who had taken leave of absence from the presidency earlier in the year after being accused of various sexual offences. </p> <p>The president has in the past been seen by Israelis as the nation&#039;s moral compass, and many hoped that Mr Peres would restore dignity to what they saw as a tarnished office. </p> <p>Mr Peres was a leading member of the Labour party for decades, but left in 2005 and later joined the centrist Kadima party. </p> <p>He twice served as prime minister, and in 1994 was jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize when foreign minister in recognition of his role in bringing about the signing of Israel&#039;s first interim peace accord with the Palestine Liberation Organisation in Oslo the previous year. </p>	<p>Abdullah Gul was chosen as president by parliament in August 2007, after months of controversy over his nomination. He is Turkey&#039;s first head of state with a background in political Islam in a country with strong secularist principles.</p> <p>The months leading to his eventual election saw street demonstrations, an opposition boycott of parliament, early parliamentary elections and warnings from the army, which has ousted four governments since 1960.</p> <p>Turkish secularists, including army generals, opposed Mr Gul&#039;s nomination, fearing he would try to undermine Turkey&#039;s strict separation of state and religion. Secularists also did not want Turkey&#039;s First Lady to wear the Muslim headscarf.</p> <p>The army top brass and the main opposition Republican People&#039;s Party, stayed away from Mr Gul&#039;s swearing-in ceremony.</p> <p>Mr Gul started in politics in an Islamist party that was banned by the courts, but later renounced the idea that Islam should be a driving force in politics. In 2001, along with other moderate members of the Islamist movement, he founded the Justice and Development Party (AKP) and distanced himself from his past political leanings.</p> <p>The party won elections in 2002 and Mr Gul served as stand-in prime minister before stepping aside for Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Mr Gul served as foreign minister under Mr Erdogan and cultivated an image as a moderate politician, acting as an impassioned voice for reforms to promote Turkey&#039;s EU bid.</p> <p>The government holds most power but the president can veto laws, appoint officials, and name judges. Voters in a referendum in October 2007 backed plans to have future presidents elected by the people instead of by parliament.</p>
President > Summary	Israel&#039;s elder statesman, Shimon Peres	Abdullah Gul is seen as a moderate figure
Prime minister	Benjamin Netanyahu	Recep Tayyip Erdogan
Prime minister > Profile	<p>Benjamin Netanyahu, the leader of the right-wing Likud party, became prime minister after an inconclusive early election in February 2009, a decade after holding the office once before. </p> <p>The outgoing administration, led by the centrist Kadima party, failed to reassemble as a new centre-left coalition, and Mr Netanyahu was able to form a government with the nationalist Yisrael Beiteinu party, various Jewish religious parties and the centre-left Labour party. He later united Yisrael Beinteinu with Likud in an attempt to form a broad conservative party.</p> <p>This government managed to steer Israel out of the global economic recession, but faced mounting protests about the rising cost of living.</p> <p>It also failed to make any headway in relations with the Palestinians, Jewish settlers on the West Bank and the Obama administration in the United States. </p> <p>During the election Mr Netanyahu had pledged not to transfer land occupied by Israel to a Palestinian state in return for peace, on the grounds that previous Israeli withdrawals had only met with further Palestinian armed attacks. </p> <p>Several months later he angered settlers by accepting the creation of Palestinian state, but his conditions, including its complete demilitarisation. were unacceptable to Palestinian leaders. </p> <p>The prime minister&#039;s refusal to concede a full suspension of settlement activity - a key Palestinian condition for a return to stalled peace talks - frustrated the United States, and a partial suspension of permits for new settlements in 2009-2010 only served to spark angry protests by settlers. </p> <p>Mr Netanyahu&#039;s repeated warnings over the perceived threat of Iran&#039;s nuclear programme have also complicated relations with the US. </p> <p>A coalition dispute over the budget prompted Mr Netanyahu to call an early election in January 2013, which saw a boost for two new secular parties - Yesh Atid in the centre and the pro-settler Jewish Home - in a campaign fought mainly on economic issues. </p> <p>After months of wrangling the prime minister managed to assemble a coalition with these two parties, plus a small splinter group from Kadima, that excluded the Jewish religious parties and raised the possibility of one of Israel&#039;s periodic attempts at rolling back the influence of ultra-Orthodox groups.</p> <p>During his previous term as prime minister in 1996-99 Mr Netanyahu was initially hostile towards the new Palestinian Authority, but went on to show some flexibility while maintaining a security-first policy. </p> <p>Defeated by Labour leader Ehud Barak in 1999, he later served as finance minister under Likud PM Ariel Sharon, pushing through a series of market-oriented reforms before resigning in 2005 in protest at Mr Sharon&#039;s decision to pull out from Gaza. </p> <p>Mr Netanyahu was born in 1949 in Tel Aviv, and spent part of his childhood in the United States where his father was a professor . During his five years in Israel&#039;s army, he served as captain of an elite commando unit. A fluent English-speaker, Mr Netanyahu has long been a prominent advocate for Israel in the international media. </p>	<p>Recep Tayyip Erdogan began a third term of office in June 2011, following a resounding general election win for his Islamist-leaning Justice and Development Party (AKP).</p> <p>The election gave the AKP its highest electoral score since coming to power in 2002, and put Mr Erdogan on course to become the most successful leader in Turkey&#039;s democratic history.</p> <p>His party nonetheless fell just short of the majority it was seeking to press ahead with a major constitutional overhaul without the support of other parties in parliament. Mr Erdogan in his victory speech promised to seek compromise with the opposition over the issue.</p> <p>Mr Erdogan has brought economic and political stability to Turkey and faced down the country&#039;s powerful military establishment, which previously had a history of overthrowing elected governments that it saw as challenging either the secular constitution or national security.</p> <p>Steady military pressure combined with negotiations also brought the Kurdish rebel PKK group to a truce that provided for a withdrawal of all PKK fighters to Iraq from May 2013.</p> <p>In September 2010, his government won resounding public approval for its plans to change the 30-year-old constitution. The amendments to the constitution were aimed at reducing still further the power of the military and meeting the requirements for EU membership.</p> <p>Opponents accuse the government of authoritarianism and point to growing intolerance towards critical journalists and media. The Journalists Union of Turkey says 94 were in jail for carrying out their professional duties - the highest number in the world. More than half are members of the Kurdish minority.</p> <p>The heavy sentences handed down to retired military officers found guilty of conspiring against the Islamist government have also led Mr Erdogan&#039;s critics to accuse him of trying to silence the secularist opposition. The prime minister denies that these cases are politically motivated. </p> <p>Mr Erdogan hinted in October 2012 that he might stand for the presidency in 2014, and is widely expected to made renewed efforts to boost the constitutional powers of the head of state ahead of the vote in order to turn Turkey into a presidential republic.</p> <p>Mr Erdogan first became prime minister several months after his party&#039;s landslide election victory in November 2002. He had been barred from standing in the poll because of a previous criminal conviction for reading an Islamist poem at a political rally. Changes to the constitution paved the way for him to run for parliament in 2003.</p> <p>He identified EU entry as a top priority and introduced reforms which paved the way for the opening of membership talks in October 2005. although these have run into the twin pillars of widespread European opposition and the eurozone crisis. </p> <p>Since then Mr Erdogan&#039;s foreign policy has concentrated as seeking a role as honest broker in the Middle East by building bridges to Iran and Arab states, while adopting a stridently hostile tone towards Turkey&#039;s longstanding ally Israel - albeit falling short of severing diplomatic relations. </p> <p>The popularity of his &quot;Turkish model&quot; among liberals and moderate Islamic groups in Arab countries has boosted Turkey&#039;s prestige, although this has yet to translate into tangible foreign-policy gains for the country.</p> <p>In the summer of 2013 Mr Erdogan began to look vulnerable for the first time as mass anti-government protests erupted in several cities, further inflamed by the violent police response.</p> <p>A further threat to Mr Erdogan&#039;s continued rule emerged in December 2013, when police launched an inquiry into alleged corruption among the prime minister&#039;s allies. Mr Erdogan denounced the probe as a &quot;dirty operation&quot; against his government.</p>
Prime minister > Summary	Mr Netanyahu campaigned on a policy of toughness towards Palestinian militancy	Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan

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