Tufan Turenc: The PM longs for a rose garden without thorns

Those who aim criticism at the Prime Minister, those who speak about his mistakes, those who assert that his world view might be backwards: they are all the targets of his fury.
 
For example, he just cannot come to terms with the fact that the opposition leader opposes him.
 
What he really wants is for Baykal, Agar, Mumcu, and Bahceli (the main opposition leaders) to applaud his every move, and elevate the AKP to the sky. But of course, no such opposition leaders exist anywhere in the world.
 
Erdogan those who are against his pruning back of secularity and against his filling up the government cadres with people from his ranks alone of being anti-democratic. And he sees those who oppose the use of the headscarf as a political symbol and who resist things like discrimination between men and women, or the spreading of religious high schools and Koran courses, as enemies of religion. He does not accept that religious high schools, or illegal Koran courses, might not have a place in secular, modern government. What he says is this: "Secularity and modernity must be as I understand them to be. Anything that falls outside of that is anti-religiousness." Well, that's wonderful, but no other civilized country in the world perceives secularity and modernity the way Tayyip Erdogan and his friends do.
 
But secularity is not the same thing as anti-religiousness. The most important rule of secularity is that religion is not to be used as a political tool. Erdogan and his circle, as we have all seen, have done exactly this, over and over. In order to gain the support of the people, they constantly use religion. And accuse those who go against this of being anti-religion. Erdogan gets so angered in responding to those against him that, from time to time, he seems to forget he is the Prime Minister. He delves into speech completely un-befitting of someone in his position. For example, just this week, he said that the opposition leader was "not of the quality to be able to understand him." But he is unable to explain away the 6th article of the controversial Anti-Terror bill. Rather than clarifying who put this 6th article into the draft of the bill, and what is going to be done about it, he instead insults Baykal. Meanwhile, he forgets that there are even those in his own party who went against the inclusion of this article in the new bill.
 
 
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Erdogan ought to know that, being this angered, he will not be able to lead the country, and that both he and his circle will make many mistakes as a result. Ruling parties who listen seriously to critiques, and then straighten out mistakes as a result of this listening, last for a very long time. Erdogan should not forget that, as a country, very difficult days await us ahead. There is terror, as well as Iraq, Iran, Cyprus, and the EU. In order to defeat these problems, the AKP must gather the support of both the opposition and the people. But with his current stance and behavior, Erdogan will never get this support. The worst thing of all to do to this country is to make statements like those we are hearing from him lately, dividing the people of Turkey into "those who are religious and those who are not." This road is a very wrong road.