Oktay Eksi: Quo vadis* Turkey?

There is no personal reason for our fear.We see that Erdogan and his team's leadership are leading the country running toward an unforeseen danger.We address this issue in this column on a number of occasions in this column and even listed some of the incidents causing alarm on Oct. 4, 2008. We tried to draw attention to the probability of the current ongoing bloodshed in the mountains spilling onto the streets.Of course nobody paid any attention.And this avoidance has lead to the situation in which the prime minister is unable to travel to eastern and southeastern regions of the country without high security measures being taken.While he had the opportunity to fix this situation, he did exactly the opposite of what was required. Firstly, he made a statement in Turkey's southeastern province of Hakkari on Nov. 3 declaring, one state, one flag and one nation, which we also in agreement about.But he didn't stop there. He continued with remarks that could be said with totalitarianism in mind: "Who opposes this? Anyone who disputes this cannot stay in this country. He can go wherever he wants. Is there another reaction that is fairer than this?" he said.Of course there was a timely reply from Ahmet Turk, the leader of pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party. He asked," Isn't this country our joint motherland? Who is trying drive out the other, and from whose motherland?" (We can also mention Turk's other unbelievable irresponsible actions in another article.)A similar incident occurred in Bulgaria recently. Boyko Borissov, the leader of the racist GERB party, said to Turkish-origin Bulgarian citizens, "Be Bulgarian and stay here, or go to Turkey if you feel Turkish". Immediately following this statement, Bulgarian President Georgi Pivanov called Borissov and asked him to make an apology.This is happening in a country where democracy was launched just 16 years ago.As mentioned above, we wished that the prime minister "had stopped there". And we say again we wish that he would have been satisfied with just saying "anybody who disputes this can go".But he was unable to contain himself, he was "legally wrong" in his defense when asked his thoughts on an incident involving a citizen firing a pump action shotgun at pro- terrorist PKK organization demonstrators in Istanbul. He said:
"Firstly, I want to advice all citizens to be patient. But for how long can this patience continue? I am concerned about this. Citizens will begin to take their own measures to defend themselves using every means available to them, if you break their shop windows or make attempts on their lives."Does he fail to see that these remarks give the green light to bloodshed between brothers? Is there no one in his family or anyone close to him that can tell act more wisely?* Where are you going?