The election of the 12th President of Turkey was remarkably different than the elections of the previous 11. For the first time in the history of the Republic, the head of the state was directly elected by ordinary people rather than chosen by their representatives in the Grand National Assembly of Turkey. On 10 August 2014, the incumbent Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan won a simple majority of votes in the first round of the election and became the president for the next five years.