People say that spring is in the air. A “Turkish spring”, to be precise. But the unrest in Turkey is not like the popular uprisings against dictatorships in Tunisia or Egypt. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the prime minister, who is the target of the anger, is not a dictator but a popularly elected leader who enjoys the support of half of the electorate.
Moreover, Mr Erdogan deserves a lot of praise for his achievements in the past decade: the Turkish economy bloomed, minorities such as Kurds and Christians have enjoyed liberal reforms, and a peace deal was agreed with armed Kurdish separatists. Turkey, in fact, had just become the shining star of the region – a synthesis of Islam, democracy and the market economy.
However, since the beginning of Mr Erdogan’s third term in June 2011, we have also witnessed a deepening problem – his inability to take into account the needs of the other half of country’s citizens. Mr Erdogan has a purely “majoritarian” understanding of democracy: he seems to think that once he gets the ballots, he earns the right to do everything he fancies.