Brash and stubborn, Turkey's leader doesn't shrink from a scrap. His voice booms when he gets on a podium and his folksy zingers enthrall supporters as much as they repulse opponents. That trademark combativeness, though, is fueling the protests against his government.
Turkey has been gripped by street skirmishes since Friday, when a police raid against a peaceful demonstration in an Istanbul park blew the lid off pent-up hostility toward the government in a divided population. The protests are largely driven by visceral dislike among urban and secular circles for Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the three-term prime minister with designs on the presidency.
They see him as an increasingly uncompromising figure who has been backsliding on his stated commitment to individual freedoms and an early record of democratic reforms.
The backdrop is a patchwork of tension between overlapping strands of the modern and traditional, the secular and religious, the democratic and authoritarian, military and civilian. Under Erdogan's firm grasp over the last decade, Turkey moved toward electoral and economic stability, earning a reputation as a regional success story and a possible model for countries struggling to reconcile Islam and democratic impulses.
The protests make clear that many Turks — but hardly all — think his hardheaded style, which served its purpose early on for a country cowed by the military, has run its course.
Conciliatory comments toward the protesters from some government officials also hint at disagreement with their leader's approach.
Since Turkey has a stable developing democracy and Erdogan's Islamic-rooted government doesn't appear to be in danger of toppling before his term is up, it's up to the prime minister to chart the course of the crisis. Although his deputy has apologized for the crackdown, Erdogan has so far doubled down, choosing confrontation over reconciliation, dismissing the demonstrators as rabble and even branding Twitter, used by activists to organize and update each other, as a menace.
"Social media is the pain in the neck of all societies," Erdogan said.
The startling remark, hostile to a medium that much of the world has embraced, recalls other conflicts where anti-government activists relied on social media to organize. But NATO ally Turkey does not share the same dynamics as Tunisia, Egypt, or Libya, and its relative stability suggests a Mideast-style revolution is not likely to happen.
Erdogan has led his ruling party to a string of electoral landslides, buoyed by a loyal, well-organized base that has trounced the fractured political opposition. However, his own president, Abdullah Gul, has pointed out that democracy does not only work at the ballot box, a reference to the right to peaceful protest. Government opponents complain of unilateral decision-making and edicts that appear to be religiously motivated and pose a challenge to Turkey's secular principles.
Protesters vent their displeasure by calling the 59-year-old prime minister, an ex-football player from a poor neighborhood of Istanbul, "Tayyip," a way of denigrating Erdogan because of his paternal demeanor, which would ordinarily command respect. A traditional term of address would be "Basbakanim," which means "My Prime Minister."
"Tayyip, winter is coming," warned one piece of protest graffiti. "Tayyip, would you like three kids like us?" read a sign held by a protester who lampooned Erdogan's calls for families to have three children.
05 Jun, 2013
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Source: http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t&fd=R&usg=AFQjCNFnDfC1GZozZAr3iU87FCmpFz1H9w&url=http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/turkeys-street-protests-personal-19322597
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