 Some say his government is suffering from reform fatigue, others claim it is falling prey to the vices of power. Whatever the diagnosis, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is going through a rough patch in his career, at war with the media and his party hit by defections. What Turks have mostly seen in their prime minister recently is a fretful and ill-tempered man, lashing out virtually at anybody who criticizes government policies.
| That's a sure vote getter... |
The media became his punching bag when they denounced the beating of women at a demonstration in Istanbul last month, only to be accused of "tipping off" the European Union to rights violations in Turkey. The country's most influential business group was told "to mind its own business" when it joined the critics. Next in line was a humorous magazine Erdogan took to court after it made fun of him for suing a political cartoonist who had depicted him as a cat entangled in a ball of yarn. Erdogan's reactions prompted questions over the sincerity of his stated desire to improve rights and freedoms in Turkey as a man who has often cited himself as a victim of undemocratic restrictions.
| Guess you develop a whole new set of corns when the shoe's on the other foot... |
Erdogan served a four-month jail sentence for sedition in the 1990s for publicly reciting a poem with Islamist messages. Critics say the government has lost its reform drive since it was given the green light for membership talks with the EU in December after a series of far-reaching democratic reforms that won international praise. Skeptics argue that Erdogan's Justice and Development Party (AKP), a conservative movement with Islamist roots, is not even truly committed to the EU goal and has been compelled to back it because of the overwhelming popular support it enjoys. "The EU is not a path they believe in," Suleyman Saribas, a member of Parliament who recently resigned from the governing party, told AFP. "Democracy is the regime of tolerance and they do not have it."
| It's kind of a rare commodity in the Islamic world, isn't it? |
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