The Prime Minister of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan has not been out of the news since he agreed for the demolition of Gezi Park, one of the few remaining green spaces in Istanbul to be bulldozed in making way for a shopping mall. Since the protest against the scheme began it has mushroomed from a simple environmental protest into a referendum of the leadership style of the Prime Minister who bluntly refuses to back down. After 10 years in power, Mr Erdogan is finding that the longer you sit in the top job, the lonelier it gets. Lets have a look at the Astrology of the embattled Turkish leader.
Mr Erdogan born in the suburbs of Istanbul on 26th February 1945 (no birth time known) is a Sun sign Pisces with a freewheeling Sagittarian Moon. He has no planets in earth signs to hold him down and give him a practical side and with 5 planets in water and 6 in mutable signs, this is a man who lives on his emotions, his intuition and his wits. He is a chameleon of a politician, able to fit into the prevailing mood through stealth and through his instincts. His Sun Moon combination is one of faith and idealism with a real awareness and knowledge of what is going around him, although at times it can lead him to being impractical and hard to read by others, even in his immediate circle.
His Sun sits in conjunction with Mercury and Venus, so this is a man who tends to see things his way first and has a high impression of himself. Venus and Mercury together do foster good relations between people and there is a lot of charm and humor here that can make him popular. The Pisces side of things here brings much compassion and sympathy especially to those who have the same aims as he does, however there is a tough side to Pisces too that sometimes comes out. There are two kinds of Pisces I have found in the past. The timid little fish who swim around in shoals twisting and turning their position to protect themselves, and then there are the bigger fish, the great white sharks of the oceans who devour everything in their path. I suspect Mr Erdogan belongs to the latter category.
This triple conjunction receives aspect from pretty much every other planet on his chart. It is at the point of a t-square connecting Mars and Moon conjunct in Sagittarius opposite to Jupiter in Gemini. Moon and Mars in Sagittarius is one of those placements that does like to reach for the stars and aim for the top. These people have free emotions and free tempers too and even a big jolt in their ambitions will not stop them. This is exacerbated by the opposition from Jupiter which makes Erdogan a risk taker supreme, someone who can take a gamble and be confident of it paying off. Jupiter in Gemini tends to spread the risk too and has the ability to take various ideas and to meld them into one coherent philosophy. We have faith and spirituality here abound in this t-square and the way he has combined growth and expansion (Jupiter) with his Islamic ideals did strike a chord with a lot of the Turkish people. The thing is, to do so he had to take on a country which was secular in nature and this over time has rankled with the more modernist, liberal influences in Turkey.
Tayyip Erdogan is very ambitious and controlling as a man. The ambition comes from a triple trine from Saturn in hard line and all or nothing Scorpio to his Sun, Mercury and Venus. Remember I said that Erdogan was a shark and here is the proof. He will have a tough no nonsense way of ruling, conservative to the core and his message will be tough on anything that goes against his spiritual and social principles. Furthermore with Pluto in Leo making a quindecile to his natal Sun, this is a man who is driven by power and a need to be famous and notable.
Uranus in Cancer also feeds in to Venus and Mercury by a double trine and this brings a mind which can be clever and progressive but also he will have an independent and yet rather stubborn side to him too. Certainly he will not like to be told what to do and he may rebel and go off and do his own thing despite any persuasive arguments that others might have. This can lead to a confrontational, I don’t care, I’ll do things my way style of communicating. Uranus makes a square aspect to Neptune and this shows huge inspiration and clever social ideas, there is motivation here for bringing new social order and movements which are fresh and unlike anything around at the time. Erdogan at the head of the AKP party in Turkey came along and swept the old order away with a brand new philosophy and political movement. That was then and this is now, and the new ideal he pioneered is now looking more old and tired than it used to be.
I see on his transits chart that transiting Chiron, the wounded healer is sitting on Tayyip’s natal Venus, the planet of nature and environmentalism. How appropriate an aspect can you get as he is wounded as a leader and his premiership hits the rocks. Transiting Neptune is also just 2 degrees from his natal Sun but will get no closer now for a while as Neptune is now retrograde. Nethertheless, this approach is weakening him slowly and this could be the beginning of the end of his tenure as Prime Minister of Turkey. This could be confirmed as Saturn comes around later this year in September to make a harsh Saturn return, although my instinct is that transiting Neptune will finish his run as Prime Minister when it gets to 7 Pisces possibly as early as May next year. Transiting Uranus is making a trine to his Mars Moon conjunction and this will tend to make him act and seem rather unpredictable and highly emotional now, and Mars opposing his Mars and square to his Sun may make him act in a particularly nasty fashion. Keep an eye out for some brutal police action as they try to quell the will of the Turkish people. I think it could be a long fight to the death.