A decade ago it could easily be argued that Erdogan did a lot of good for his country. With every passing day he looks more and more like a crude mafiosi dictator:

The controversy over a new 1,000 room palace for Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s president, has deepened with a government acknowledgment that the complex costs more than $600m, nearly double previous estimates.

Mehmet Simsek, finance minister, said the complex, which dwarfs the White House, the Elysee and Buckingham Palace, would cost a total of TL1.37bn, ($616m) of which TL964m had been spent so far from the budget of the prime minister’s office. This compared with previous reports estimating the cost at $350m.

Mr Erdogan sees the palace, built in protected forest land in contravention of a court decision, as a symbol of a new, more vigorous Turkey. But his critics denounce it as the excess of an ever more authoritarian and powerful leader.

“The so-called sultan has built this for himself in a country where 3m people are without work,” said Kemal Kilicdaroglu, leader of the opposition Republican Peoples party, in a speech on Tuesday, citing court of accounts figures suggesting contractors were overpaid. “You cut down hundreds of trees to build yourself this palace.”

The complex, opened last month, incorporates Turkey’s traditional Seljuk and Ottoman architectural styles, and features a majestic tree lined interior hallway, an underground bunker and a park.

Last time I was in Istanbul, a year or two ago, I had a chance to have a lovely fish dinner at Hugh Pope's — he writes about Turkey for the International Crisis Group — at his Istiklal Cadesi apartment. It's a great location to monitor the ongoing protests against Erdogan, and Hugh has a long post up on his blog detailing the events on the day. Here's his take:

So what’s new in all this? Social media, for a start. Many of my Turkish friends are glued to their Facebook accounts, sharing pictures of the worst police outrages – a remarkable one shows a policeman dousing a protestor with a device like an insect spray gun, as the protestor holds up a sign saying “Chemical Tayyip” [Erdogan] — and spoof posters like an ad for the “Istanbul Gas Festival”, “We can’t keep calm, we’re Turkish” and so on. The spontaneous look of the small groups of protestors coalescing and dispersing in the street outside is quite unlike the usual formal protests organized by unions and political parties, and lacks the angry, violent edge to the pop-up parades by radical left-wing groups. Mostly young and middle class, they include people in shirts for all Istanbul’s big rival football clubs, young women in headscarves, groups of white-coated medical volunteers, and a young man with a big bag of lemons, selling them to the crowd as an tear gas antidote.

On the other hand, Turkey had the same banging of pots and pans in anti-government neighbourhoods in the 1990s, which was widespread on the Asian side of Istanbul last night; and in my district of Beyoglu, every year or two a big issue brings angry demonstrators and policemen with gas weaponry that is used to clear people away. While the government is clearly rattled this time round, after four days, perhaps the only obvious long-term political consequence I can predict so far is that all this will be remembered when Prime Minister Erdogan launches his expected quest for the presidency in an election next year.

There is a little over-enthusiasm in some circles about the scope of these anti-Erdogan protests. Erdogan is no Mubarak or Ben Ali, he was legitimately elected after all and can credibly claim to have effectively tackled Turkey's economic problems and countered Turkey's once coup-happy generals. But it's not all rosy, apart from his political longevity, there is a relatively poor human rights record (especially on the media and the Kurdish question), an economic growth story that is not without its cronyism, rising cost of living and economic inequality, and a cult of personality that is foundering on (among other things) a foreign policy humbled by the Syria question. The parallels to draw are not with the Arab uprisings, and not quite with recent European unrest such as Greece. This appears to be a very Turkish wave of discontent, perhaps the bursting of the much-inflated Erdogan bubble that thrived pretty much unchallenged for the last decade.

Hugh concludes with some commentary on the scandalous media handling (by state TV but also elsewhere):

There’s a lot of talk among my Turkish friends of the Gezi Park demonstrations being a “turning point”, and today it feels that way, with growing numbers of demonstrators in the streets, many cities in Turkey protesting in sympathy, and the unscripted nature of proceedings. Normal patterns have been drastically changed in recent days, not just in  traffic but also in many peoples’ lives. Phone calls with friends in the center are often about “my street is all mixed up now, can’t talk for long”. If anyone gets killed, rather than 100 or so already injured, that will sharply escalate the situation. Here’s hoping the government manages to handle the next 24 hours more sensitively than the last. A good first move would be to get some traction by letting state television give a full version of events – currently, people are consuming a diet of wild rumors and partial views on social media, which can only add to the current escalation.

But do read it all.

Among the interesting things that came out of Recep Erdogan's visit to Egypt (a topic on which I'm writing a longer piece) was the furore he caused among Egyptian Islamists when he endorsed secularism. Erdogan had a busy schedule, and did spend some of it meeting with religious figures such as Pope Shenouda and Sheikh al-Azhar Ahmed al-Tayeb, as well as Islamist politicians, including MB General Guide Mohamed Badie, former MB and presidential candidate Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh (for some, the MB's stealth candidate). I think that's a first for any foreign head of government.

In his keynote speech at the Opera House, he reportedly made a statement in favor of a secular state as the only basis for social progress and economic development. I don't have a transcript of the speech to verify (and besides don't understand Turkish), but this bit in Erdogan's speech is causing quite a stir. The Muslim Brothers slammed Erdogan for "foreign intervention" — the classic infantile Egyptian reaction to any foreign leaders' statement on their country, as if saying something meant interfering — and the new Salafist party al-Fadila attacked him for favoring secularists over Islamists. Other Islamist leaders said  that the Turkish model is not reproducible in Egypt, but some talking heads think Erdogan's statement boosted the secularists' chances in the current debate over "Egypt's identity" and the future constitution.

Considering that Egyptian secularists have already conceded Islam as the region of state, Sharia as a source of legislation, and personal status law according to religion, I'm not sure what the debate is about aside from the implementation of the above. 

Erdogan says the Egyptian reaction was due to a translation error, according to Zaman (via @blakehounshell):

Erdoğan also offered an explanation for the Muslim Brotherhood's anger at his words in Cairo, where he told Egyptians not to be “afraid of secularism.” The prime minister said: “My words were misunderstood because of a translation mistake. In Arabic, there is a word for ‘irreligiousness,' and the translator used that word for secularism. Secularism is not about being an enemy of religion. It is about the state maintaining the same distance from all religions and acting as a custodian of their beliefs. This is what we mean when we say don't be afraid of secularism.”

He also said a person who expressed anger at Erdoğan's words was going to make a new statement and offer a correction to the misunderstanding. Erdoğan also said rumors that the person who made the statement on behalf of the Muslim Brotherhood was not their presidential candidate. “This person is someone who left the Muslim Brotherhood. Plus, if the Muslim Brotherhood had any problems with us, they would have told us so during our contacts in Egypt. They didn't even imply any discomfort [with the secularism statement].”

It doesn't really look like Erdogan is walking it back fully, but rather talking about a misunderstanding. He's giving a lesson about secularism not being the opposite of piety, something many Egyptian secularists and quite a few Islamists have advocated. But in Egypt's current culture wars, to have the prime minister of the most (politically, democratically, economically, socially) successful Islamist party in the world advocate a secular system in which he has thrived seems to be a bit much.

The Brothers, in particular, have always resisted the idea of a Turkish model — in the sense of a secular system in which Islamits can exist — and said Egypt will have its own model. That's an easy nationalist line to take (we won't imitate anyone!) but if Egypt's Islamists say they don't want to be like Turkey, they still haven't quite explained what kind of model they are envisaging. I suspect that, over the next decade, we may see some Egyptian Erdoganists rise among them.