It’s amazing how far wearing suits and ties will take you. Doing so has aided Turkey’s Prime Minister in being labeled a moderate despite the fact that he is anything but that. In reality, he reveres the extremely repressive Ottoman Empire and is apparently willing to jail anyone who doesn’t portray Ottoman rulers in an acceptable way.
Turkey should follow in its ancestors’ footsteps and go everywhere they have travelled to, the Turkish prime minister said during the opening ceremony of Kütahya Zafer Airport on Nov.25.
“We move with the minds of our Dumlupınar martyrs,” Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said. “We move with the spirit that founded the Ottoman Empire.”
Erdoğan then criticized the opposition for asking “what [Turkey] was doing in Gaza, Syria and Sudan.”
“We must go everywhere our ancestors have been,” Erdoğan said. “We can not take [Atatürk’s philosophy of] peace at home, peace in the world as passivity.”
That last bit there would seem point to Erdoğan not just being interested in his country’s history but in resurrecting it.
As for freedom of expression, Erdoğan said he will “always side with dialogue” and then threatens to imprison people behind a television program that uses dialogue in a way he doesn’t seem to like.
In the same speech Erdoğan also dished out heavy criticism on the hit Turkish TV series, “Muhteşem Yüzyıl,” (The Magnificent Century) for its portrayal of the Ottoman ruler Süleyman.
“We alerted the authorities on this and we wait for judicial decision on it,” Erdoğan said. “Those who toy with these values should be taught a lesson within the premises of law.”
But he looks great in a suit and tie.