President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has an insatiable appetite for control, and is what Westerners call a "control freak." Erdogan, who gathered the Cabinet at his palace despite the perceptible discomfort of Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, who is technically the head of the council of ministers, has frequently tampered with the legislative process in the parliament; targeted the independence of the central bank, which dared not to heed his demands for lower interest rates; consolidated his hold over the judiciary and the police; used his personal contacts to keep the media under his thumb and enjoyed regulating the personal lives of citizens, including how many children they should have. His latest intervention was to prevent the former undersecretary of the National Intelligence Organization (MIT), Hakan Fidan, who had resigned, from running in elections and returning to his former post.

His newest venture is to set up a "Big Brother" system in his controversial palace. It may sound like an exaggeration, but from his control center, Erdogan will be able to keep an eye on 77 million Turkish citizens.

According to a Taraf report by Huseyin Ozay, 143 TV monitors at Erdogan’s White Palace control center will be used to keep an eye on all the closed-circuit television systems in the streets of 81 provinces through Turkey’s Mobile Electronic System Integration (MOBESE) system and transmissions from unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).

The technical infrastructure of this frighteningly ambitious project has been completed and is now being tested. All popular incidents, demonstrations, police and military operations will be monitored. Erdogan will thus be able to manage all the operations of the security forces from his palace.