He called himself the coolest dictator in the world: Who is Nayib Bukele?

El Salvador President Nayip Bukele was born on July 24, 1981 in San Salvador. He is the son of Olga Ortez de Bukele and Armando Bukele Kattán, a Palestinian imam and famous businessman. Nayip Bukele is the El Salvador representative and importer of Yamaha Motors.

He was mayor of the capital San Salvador from 2015 to 2018. He was elected as the new president of his country as a result of the election held on February 3, 2019.

Nayib Bukele, who is the President of El Salvador at the age of 38, is frequently on the world agenda as an extraordinary leader who declared Bitcoin as the official currency for the first time and mines cryptocurrencies with geothermal energy, in addition to his style that is not uncommon among politicians with his jeans, sports hats, and leather jackets. taking.

Nayib Armando Bukele Ortez (born 24 July 1981) is a Salvadoran politician and businessman who is the 43rd president of El Salvador, serving since 1 June 2019. He is the first president since José Napoleón Duarte (1984–1989) not to have been elected as the candidate of one of the country's two major political parties: the left-wing Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) and the right-wing Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA).

While Bukele, listed by TIME magazine as one of the "100 most influential people of 2021", is writing a new history in Central America, some think that El Salvador is becoming increasingly authoritarian and the young leader is corrupt and trying to concentrate all political power in his hands.

NAYIB BUKELE AND THE OTTOMAN

Born in El Salvador in 1981, Bukele comes from a lineage that includes different countries and religious beliefs. The young president's paternal grandfather and grandmother are Christian Palestinians who immigrated to El Salvador from Jerusalem and Bethlehem with Ottoman passports. While his maternal grandfather was a Greek from the Orthodox Christian sect, his maternal grandmother was a Catholic.

Bukele's father, Armando Bukele Kattán, was a businessman who made significant investments in textiles, pharmaceuticals, and media and had a doctorate at the university. Armando, who later converted to Islam and became an imam, founded the first mosque in El Salvador in 1992. Bukele's father, who passed away in 2015, was one of the well-known figures in the Muslim community in the country.

WHERE IS EL SALVADOR?

El Salvador is a country with a population of approximately 6.9 million located in Central America. The country borders Guatemala to the west and Honduras to the north and east. To the south is the Pacific Ocean. El Salvador is the most densely populated country in the American mainland and is also the most industrialized country in the region. Its official name is the Republic of El Salvador.

El Salvador, the most densely populated country in Central America, is almost the same size as the US state of New Jersey, with a surface area of 21 thousand 40 square kilometers.

El Salvador, which was the scene of a civil war in which 75 thousand people lost their lives in its history, is among the countries with the highest murder rates in the world today.

Interesting details about Bukele

Born in El Salvador in 1981, Bukele comes from a lineage that includes different countries and religious beliefs. The young president's paternal grandfather and grandmother are Christian Palestinians who immigrated to El Salvador from Jerusalem and Bethlehem with Ottoman passports. While his maternal grandfather was a Greek from the Orthodox Christian sect, his maternal grandmother was a Catholic.

40-year-old Bukele's father, Armando Bukele Kattán, was a businessman who made significant investments in textiles, pharmaceuticals, and media and had a doctorate at the university. Armando, who later converted to Islam and became an imam, founded the first mosque in El Salvador in 1992. Bukele's father, who passed away in 2015, was one of the well-known figures in the Muslim community in the country.

Bukele, who studied law at the Central American University run by the Jesuits in El Salvador, started his business life at the age of 18 before graduating from university, worked in the automotive industry, and became the dealership of famous brands such as Yamaha in the country.

Bukele, Facundo Guardado, one of the former leaders of the Farabundo Marti Farabundo National Liberation Front (Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional -FMLN), which was formed by 5 leftist guerrilla organizations fighting against the US-backed military government in the civil war in El Salvador, in the 1999 attack. He entered politics by supporting his candidacy in the presidential elections.

Bukele, who participated in the local elections on March 11, 2012, from FMLN, won the mayoralty in Nuevo Cuscatlán in the south of the country. Bukele, who took office on May 1, launched a scholarship program that allows young people with a GPA of 3.5 out of 4 to attend the university of their choice in the country. Additionally, in Nuevo Cuscatlán, where there were 12 murders a year during Bukele's three-year term as mayor, this rate dropped to one.

The young politician participated in the local elections held in 2015, again from FMLN, and this time he was elected mayor of San Salvador, the capital of the country. Bukele visited Taiwan's capital, Taipei, in 2017 and strengthened San Salvador and Taipei's sister city connections.

A year later, Bukele attended a conference in Jerusalem, where he visited the Western Wall, sacred to Jews, and told then-Jerusalem Governor Nir Barkat that his wife, Gabriela Rodríguez, also said Bukele's grandfather was a Sephardic Jew. In the last period of his term as Mayor of San Salvador, he invested a total of approximately 5.7 million dollars (approximately 65.5 million TL) in renovation works in the historical areas of the capital.

However, Bukele was expelled from the party on October 10, 2017, on the grounds that he verbally and physically attacked the party member. In the local elections held a year later, FMLN lost control of 20 municipalities, including San Salvador, and 8 seats in the Parliament.

With his expulsion from the FMLN, Bukele first announced the Nuevas Ideas, which he started as a citizens' movement, to participate in the presidential elections in which he aims to run in 2019. Although Bukele aimed to turn New Ideas into a political party in 2017, he initially failed to do so.

In 2018, the politician passed the legally required 50 thousand signatures by a large margin collected 200 thousand signatures in three days, and made an official application to the Supreme Electoral Council for the establishment of the party, but the procedures could not be completed in the required time for the party to become official and Bukele to become a candidate from there.

It was also argued that the board, consisting of people appointed by the opposition FMLN and the right-wing National Republican Alliance (Alianza Republicana Nacionalista -ARENA), may have delayed the process to prevent Bukele.

Thereupon, Bukele entered the 2019 presidential elections from the center-right Grand Alliance for National Unity (Gran Alianza por la Unidad Nacional -GHANA) party.

Bukele, who harshly criticized the actions of the two centrist parties FMLN and ARENA, which have governed the country for the last 20 years, came to the fore with his promises to fight against organized crime and corruption and to prevent poverty and income inequality.

Bukele, who created his own style with unusual clothes in the political arena such as jeans and leather jackets, used social media very well in his campaign and managed to reach Generation Z (those born between 1997 and 2012).

The election campaign strategy of the politician, who gained great sympathy, especially among young people with slogans such as "If no one steals, there is enough money for all of us", gave a positive response. Bukele won 54 percent of the votes in the first round of the election, becoming the first person elected president from a party other than ARENA and FMLN in the country since 1984.

Bukele's victory was interpreted as an indication that the two centrist parties that had ruled the country for the last 25 years had lost their dominance. In his victory speech, the young politician said, "They (ARENA and FMLN), as always, thought that our people would never wake up, they tirelessly said that we couldn't do good things."

In the parliamentary elections held in February 2021, New Ideas won 56 of the seats in the 84-person parliament. 137 of the country's 262 municipalities are under the control of Bukele's party.

The dismissal of 5 members of the Supreme Court and Chief Public Prosecutor Raul Melara in the first session held after the parliamentary elections, in the elections held in May, attracted great reaction. The Supreme Court ruled that the curfews implemented by Bukele within the scope of COVID-19 measures in June 2020 were unconstitutional. It was reported that Bukele's move was also seen as retaliation.

According to US-based Human Rights Watch -HRW data, 4 thousand 236 people who violated the isolation rules announced by the Bukele administration were detained and ill-treated by the police.

He could not establish the same rapport with Biden that he had with Trump.

Bukele, who got along well with former US President Donald Trump and gained supporters in the US by supporting his strict policies against immigration, has not yet been able to maintain the same rhythm with US President Joe Biden, who follows a different Central American policy than Trump.

While the Biden administration accused the El Salvador leader of violating human rights and resorting to authoritarian practices, it added some names, including Bukele's party private secretary Carolina Recinos, to the sanctions list for corruption, following the Supreme Court liquidation.

On the other hand, it was claimed that Bukele requested a meeting with the US President during an unannounced visit to Washington DC in February 2021, but Biden refused.

Bukele, on the other hand, argued that the trip was not official, that he went to the USA to spend time with his wife and child, and that he did not request to meet with Biden.

The Supreme Court's decision approving Bukele's re-election in September 2021 was also reacted to by a segment of the public. According to the old practice, the person elected as the head of state had to wait 10 years before running for re-election. With this decision changed, the way for Bukele to run for the second time in 2024 has been opened.

Following the decision, thousands of people took to the streets in the capital San Salvador, and protested, chanting anti-Bukele slogans.

Bukele, who took office with the promise of fighting against high crime rates, criminal organizations, and gangs, announced the "Regional Control Plan" on June 20, 2019. The plan envisaged increasing the number and influence of security forces in certain regions of the country and reducing crime rates. The plan aimed to provide better firearms, ammunition, equipment, helicopters, and patrol vehicles to both the National Police (Policía Nacional Civil de El Salvador) and the El Salvador Armed Forces (Fuerza Armada de El Salvador).

However, in February 2020, ARENA and FMLN announced that they would not vote in the budget negotiations, arguing that they were not given enough information about the work in question to vote on the 109 million dollar (approximately 1.2 billion TL) loan from the USA for the plan. Thereupon, armed soldiers and police raided the Parliament and tension rose in the country.

According to the data of InSight Crime, an independent and non-profit research organization that focuses especially on organized crime organizations in Latin America and the Caribbean, with the implementation of Bukele's Regional Control Plan, the murder rate per 100,000 people was 51 percent in 2018. decreased to 36 percent in 2019. The same rate was around 81 percent in 2016.

In a tweet on July 20, 2021, Bukele said that they aim to double the number of soldiers in the armed forces within 5 years. Accordingly, he stated that a new group of soldiers will be added to the union every 15 weeks and the army of 20 thousand people will have 40 thousand soldiers.

On the other hand, allegations that the Bukele administration made agreements with criminal organizations and that the serious decrease in crime rates was due to this were also brought to the agenda.

In the news published on the opposition news site El Faro and prepared based on prison records, the Bukele administration has held secret meetings with the imprisoned members of Mara Salvatrucha 13 (MS-13), one of the country's most famous criminal organizations, and its rival Barrio 18, since coming to power in 2019. It was claimed that he did.

The news claimed that negotiations were held with the gangs to reach an agreement to reduce their murder rates and support Bukele's re-election. However, while Bukele denied the allegations, an investigation was later launched against El Faro on the grounds of money laundering.

In December 2021, the United States also accused the Bukele administration of secretly negotiating with these gangs. In the statement made by the US Treasury Department, it was claimed that the El Salvador government transferred money to gangs to reduce violence and reduce the number of murders. In the statement, it was announced that Deputy Minister of Justice Osiris Luna Meza and Carlos Amílcar Marroquín Chica, head of the charity organization Social Fabric Reconstruction Unit, were included in the sanctions list because they had contact with gangs.

The first country to officially put Bitcoin into circulation

Another action of Bukele that made headlines around the world was his official introduction of Bitcoin into circulation. The El Salvador leader's bill to recognize Bitcoin as a legal currency was passed by Congress in June 2021, and in September, cryptocurrency was officially used by a country for the first time in the world.

However, in El Salvador, which was the first country to officially put Bitcoin into circulation, this decision was met with a reaction from some segments of the public.