Above is the photo of the scissors that were used by Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan when he opened a new hotel in Istanbul two years ago.
As if it is a relic, the scissors are on public display nowadays, Radikal newspaper reports.
Is it sycophancy or an example for the worship of authority?
I'm not sure about the psychology of Erdogan's supporters here, but I do know that he has recently given some hints about his political strategy for the next couple of years.
And the scissor is just one symbol.
* * *
"The people want to bring down the regime" has been the most popular political slogan associated with the Arab Spring.
This slogan, with which Arab peoples overthrew dictators, could send a student to prison not only in Mubarak's Egypt, but also in democratic Turkey.
Student leader Deniz Gezmis was executed by hanging 40 years ago for trying "to change the Turkish constitution by force," after leading several political demonstrations.
Still, more than 2800 students are in Turkish jails because of lesser crimes, like "unfurling banners about free education."
In such a bleak atmosphere, Prime Minister Erdogan visited Middle East Technical University (ODTU) before a satellite launching ceremony in Ankara last week.
Hundreds of police officers escorted Erdogan and clashed with the protesting students in the university campus, arresting scores of them after using tear gas and water cannon, injuring some.
The ODTU students were released as the university administration and their professors stood behind them, posing as a rare species in the Turkish academy, which overwhelmingly became an apparatus of the political authority.
According to some ODTU students, the problem was not only the police brutality. The police also confiscated their Deniz Gezmis posters, asking them questions about him and his ideology.
Gezmis was a student at ODTU before his death.
Consequently, Erdogan turned his attention from the students to their professors. "If they are raising such students, what a shame! We don't need such professors," he said.
The presidents of other Turkish universities competed with each other to criticize ODTU and defend the police.
It is no surprise, as many of them were appointed by Erdogan's comrade President Abdullah Gul, although they had collected a significantly smaller number of votes against more popular candidates in the elections at their universities.
Burhan Kuzu, a senior MP for the governing party who is the chief architect of the draft constitution, supported Erdogan in an interview for Radikal newspaper today.
Kuzu opposed the present autonomy of universities and suggested that it is his natural right -as an MP who had confronted a student protest- to fire a dean, if he wants.
* * *
Many Turks, who got used to the authoritarian tone of Erdogan, are now even more concerned that the pressure that he puts on all elements of the political and the social opposition is getting more and more biting.
It is especially crucial as Turkey is approaching to two elections, the local one in 2013 and the presidential one in 2014.
It seems that the new constitution that is being drafted almost unilaterally by the governing AKP is just about changing the system into a presidential one. And this presidential system won't have any checks and balances like in the U.S. or in France.
Erdogan is now openly opposing the separation of powers, a vital concept for any democracy, by defining it as an "obstacle" for the will of the nation, which awkwardly resembles the will of Erdogan himself for most of the time.
As Erdogan's draft constitution will virtually create a one-man state, it is clear that he will confront intra-party opposition, too, because the parliament would be rendered obsolete in the system that Erdogan has in mind.
Erdogan's aides admit that he might have to forget about a new constitution -because it's arithmetically harder to be ratified by the parliament- and opt to amend the current constitution to give him same powers.
So, who cares about democratizing Turkey, if it's all about grabbing even more power?
But there are other questions, too... For instance: What would the current president Gul do after 2014? Would there be a reconciliation between Erdogan and Gul to create a Turkish version of Putin-Medvedev tandem in Russia? Or would there be even a deeper rift between them?
I can only hope that something, whatever it is, will happen to save Turkish democracy until then.
* * *
2014 is still a distant date, though, and things get worse and worse for the Turkish democracy. i.e. the consolidation of power comes with an increasing Islamization of the secular state.
The new education system in Turkey could be the base of a fatal problem for any democratic country. For instance, from 2015 on, all 18-year-old students will have to answer questions on Islam in the profiency exam for higher education.
As such, there are already worrisome symptoms. Three examples from last week:
A group of "religious" students in Suleyman Demirel University forced out a Turkish rock band by condemning their lyrics that made a pun with a verse from Quran.
In Yalova, Roma students at an elemantary school were asked about their religious beliefs, with questions like: "Do you believe in the presence and the unity of Allah? Do you perform ablution?"
In Eskisehir, Turkish officials have taken down paintings of nudes from the walls of a state art gallery and trade unions condemned it as censorship.
As I said, the problem is still about the government and its ways to transform the state. I don't believe that the Turkish society is being Islamically radicalized, but it is clear that it is now easier for the radicals to speak out and even suppress the moderates.
That is why it is important for the Turkish democracy to support the democratic forces that are being bullied -and almost lynched- by the governing structures, as well as the carriers or the beneficiaries of the governing ideology.
Stupid -and even heretical- displays of sanctifying the power for whatever reason should be revealed and ridiculed for sake of the public good.
Meanwhile, the people who question the authority rationally, instead of just submitting to it or cynically making use of it, should be encouraged and supported.
The Erdogan Scissors is the symbol of the former group of people and the ODTU resistance is of the latter.
All in all, Prime Minister Erdogan is running with scissors towards the finish line in 2014. But it's a dangerous run anyway:
Either his own political fortunes will be hurt or the last lifeline of the Turkish democracy will be cut.
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