A warning to Erdoğan

Has the fate of 600 trees in central Istanbul given birth to a Turkish Spring? Will Taksim Square become to the Turks what Tahrir Square was to the Egyptians? It is too early to tell and the chances are high that the answers to both questions will be no. But Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, drunk with power following electoral victories in 2002, 2007 and 2011, has been dealt a serious blow by the worst unrest since he took power.

The massive protests, in which a wide range of ideological groups have taken part, are a warning to Erdoğan. It is unclear whether the protesters will save the trees in Gazi Park (Istanbul's equivalent of Central Park in New York), but they already have given Erdoğan a lesson on the limits of power. His dream of becoming president in 2014, after a constitutional reform to replace Turkey's parliamentary system with a presidential one, no longer looks as certain as it did before Friday.

How ironic is it that Erdoğan, who lectured Arab leaders about morality during the Arab Spring, let his security forces use excessive force in dispersing protestors? This is the same Erdoğan who in 2011 called on his former friend Syrian President Bashar Assad to deal gently with protesters. Syrian Information Minister Omran al-Zoabi, another of the "righteous" from our region, expressed sympathy for the Turkish people on Saturday, saying they "don't deserve all this violence" from Erdoğan. What a happy neighborhood.

This is also the same Erdoğan who recommended that Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi separate religion and state. But it was in fact Turkey that passed a new law last week restricting the sale of alcohol, another step meant to change the face of Kemalist Turkey.

Under Erdoğan, the Turkish government has completely ignored the will of a significant portion of the country's population. In addition to the new alcohol law, there have been a number of other perplexing events recently, including the mayor of Ankara calling on residents of his city to "adopt behavior consistent with moral values" and a Turkish court sentencing a Turkish-Armenian intellectual to 13 months in prison for insulting the Prophet Muhammad. Such occurrences do not contribute to Turkey's democratic image. Also, Erdoğan's purging of the military, which is the defender of Turkish democracy, and his cultivation of the police point clearly in one direction –– Islamization.

Gazi Park is the lung of an Istanbul metropolis that is home to 17 million people. The development project in the park, overseen by the mayor of Istanbul (a friend of Erdoğan's), gave residents of the city good reason to take to the streets. Environmental quality has become a common value for many Turks. Erdoğan's problem began when chants of "Save the trees" were replaced by "Erdoğan, resign."

In a speech on Saturday, Erdoğan said that Turkey is a democracy (even though the local media blackout of the unrest proved the opposite) that will not give in to the tyranny of the minority. But the minority in Turkey (49 percent) showed that it knows how to raise its voice. The tyranny of the majority is not what concerns the minority, but rather the tyranny of Erdoğan. Istanbul's residents also showed that economic prosperity does not mean everything in their city. Money without freedom is not enough.

A stable Turkey is very important to the region, particularly in turbulent times like these. But this is now a card that the U.S. does not have in the poker game in Syria. At this rate, Iranian Ayatollah Ali Khamenei will suddenly present himself as a responsible adult.

By the way, as of press time, Erdoğan had yet to ask forgiveness from his people.

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