When Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was 13, his family moved to Istanbul from the coastal Turkish city of Rize, where his father had been a coastguard, according to the BBC. He would go on to study management — as well as have some success as a semi-professional soccer player. But for a rough few years as a teenager he sold watermelon and simit, a circular, sesame-dotted bread eaten as a popular street snack in Turkey, to bring in some cash. The humble background contributed to his popularity early in his political career, and made him a local hero in the neighborhoods where he was a street vendor.
