( CNN ) -- Turkey is no Egypt and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan no Hosni Mubarak . This is not a `` Turkish Spring , '' but a message to an elected leader to reign in his hubris and his divisive politics . These are some of the central messages , which both Turkish commentators ( ourselves included ) , and the international media have brought across . Erdogan still has a choice , as the Financial Times reminds us , between rising to the highs of statesmanship of former French President Charles de Gaulle or spending his remaining political life as a Turkish likeness of Russian President Vladimir Putin . The question now being asked in Turkey 's capital Ankara , on Istanbul 's Taksim Square and in the occupied Gezi Park , where the initial protests started , is whether Erdogan has the political determination and the nerve to accept the demands of the initial protestors . WATCH MORE : 'Lady in red ' does not want to be a symbol . That would mean giving up on his personal dream to build the Ottoman barracks on the park and turn it into a shopping mall . His track record would suggest otherwise . Probably the single most important trigger for the rapid spread of events was the prime minister 's inability to listen to critique and disagreement , and the way in which this inability has manifested over the last few years . His rhetoric has been spiraling out of control and has ranged from lecturing women on how many children to bear to calling everyone who enjoys drinking a beer in a sidewalk cafe an alcoholic . READ MORE : Erdogan defends handling of protests . Further , the country has used an excessively violent policing strategy , with which the government has oppressed almost all legitimate protest by trade unions , political movements and student groups . All this extreme use of force looks awkward in a country where the government was re-elected with almost 50 % of the vote only two years ago and where its macro-economic development indicators tell a story of unfettered progress . One might wonder why a government that still enjoys such popular support is unable to tolerate a few protests here and there and is incapable of giving into what are often very reasonable demands against the excesses of environmental degradation and rent-based urban renewal policies . Why would an elected prime minister , who has , until now , been respected abroad and at home , use the force of his security apparatus to crush so brutally any popular dissent , which is far from threatening his place at the top of Turkey 's political system ? WATCH MORE : The week that changed Turkey . Part of the answer lies in Turkey 's recent record of undemocratic manipulations to bring the government down . Kemalist elites , the military , the judiciary and the so-called `` deep state '' rogue elements acting within the visible state structures , conspired to terminate the Justice and Development Party 's ( AKP ) government from the very moment of its first election in 2002 . Ever since , the party had to face several attempts at power grab , from an ultra-nationalist conspiracy in the mid-2000s based on unresolved assassinations of Christian missionaries and the murder of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink to the so-called Republican Marches against the election as President of Abdullah Gul to the Constitutional Court 's only narrowly averted closure case against the ruling party in 2008 . All of these experiences have led Erdogan and many members of the AKP government to look at Turkish politics through the prism of conspiracies , and the blame for this shift does not lie only with the AKP . More significantly though , the manipulations they faced from the judiciary and the military have led the AKP government to fill both institutions with sympathizers , thereby removing the already weak system of checks and balances in Turkey . READ MORE : Erdogan : Leader or 'dictator ' ? The confluence of both the conspiratorial mind-set and a lack of checks and balances has created the ground for Erdogan 's unhealthy mix of extreme self-confidence on the one side and his insecurity vis-Ã -vis criticism on the other . The shopping mall in Gezi Park , the third bridge over the Bosporus , the new airport and a canal project that is supposed to connect the Marmara and the Black Sea have been devised without any consultation and public debate . That the prime minister sees any criticism of these projects as manipulations by domestic and external enemies is a sign of his insecurity . That he failed to grasp that the Taksim protests were not started by undercover military agents , die-hard Kemalists , Iranian agents or Syrian provocateurs may yet mark the beginning of his undoing . Will Erdogan be able to arrive at a sober consideration of the situation and give in to the demands of the protestors in Gezi Park , call an impartial review of police brutality and reconsider the heavy policing strategies , which have turned Turkey into a police state ? WATCH MORE : Turkey as a 'pivotal ' country . If he did , he would still have a chance to enter Turkish history as a statesman who carried his country into the 21st century , disassembled the military 's tutelage , ended the Kurdish War and granted long-fought-for rights to the country 's largest minority , the Kurds . If he fails , and drags the country towards polarization and political unrest , his government , the economy and hence the people of Turkey will lose . The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Kerem Oktem and Karabekir Akkoyunlu .
Turkey is no Egypt and Erdogan no Hosni Pasha , Mustafa Oktem and Karabekir Akkoyunlu respectively . But the trigger for the rapid spread of events was the prime minister 's inability to respond to criticism and disagreement . One can wonder why a government that enjoys popular support is unable to tolerate a few protests . That the prime minister sees criticism of projects is a sign of insecurity and may yet prove his weakness .