What is the quarrel at the MGK about?

Secularist powers intend to show the AK Party the Red Lines anew, remind it that it must not cross these lines.

To what extent the general public is affected by this fight?

Is the citizen demanding an account for the way he has been more and more impoverished? Or is he interested in the power struggle between the AK Party and the representatives of the secular state?

I think that our people hardly care about that fight.

People are preoccupied with the money that will be in their pockets. They aspire to living more comfortably. They do not want tension and fights all the time. The turban issue is important but it does not top the list of priorities.

Ankara does not want to give up its powers. Bureaucracy is afraid of losing its power. The AK Party, meanwhile, is striving to translate into action the things it has on its mind. Some of these are the right thing to do. However, a too hasty and clumsy effort is being made to implement these.

What happens when the time comes to deal with the EU issue?
What we are experiences currently is, in fact, nothing. The real fight will take place on the European Union issue.

The adjustment to the EU bills will revive the quarrels on certain basic concepts. Those who believe that if local administrations were to be given extra powers that would be tantamount to adopting the "splitting Turkey up" scenario, will have to make a fresh assessment when the EU bills are put on the agenda.

We go back to square one over and over.

Are we going to trust our society and our system and adopt a new approach? Or are we going to hide behind the fear of the State?

Will we manage to reach a consensus towards our new Red Lines?

Leave these issues aside and let us talk about the EU
We are wasting our time and our energy. After a while — on a date that is not distant — Turkey will be an EU member and a great part of the sovereignty Ankara currently exercises, will be ceded to Brussels.

It would be better for us to be aware of this fact and to come to terms with it.

Let us leave this path now if we will be up in arms due to our suspicion that the country would be split up if certain restrictions — on which we have been highly sensitized — would be lifted, that is, if we are going to ask the EU to give us special treatment by saying, "We are faced with conditions unique to our country."

The countries that join the EU have to trust their people.

We should know that we cannot continue on our path by saying, "These are religious reactionaries. If the restrictions were to be lifted they would transform Turkey into an Islamist state," or with the assumption, "Those are Kurdist. They would divide up our country." We should know that one cannot gain admission into the EU with that kind of approach.

If we want to protect ourselves and our country let us make our laws, draw our red lines and trust our people.

There is no other way of doing that.

Otherwise we would remain as a stick-wielding, inward-looking, scraggly third world country.

Becoming a full member of the EU would save Turkey from turning into an Islamist state. Turkey would no longer live in a climate of permanent bankruptcy. It would protect Turkey from the danger of being divided. It would bring into our country an atmosphere of socio-political and economic peace.

The choice is ours.