Legally speaking, said Ersan Sen, a professor and well-known expert on criminal law, the government-led process aiming to end the armed Kurdish movement that since 1984 has cost heavily in blood and treasure to the nation and left at least 40,000 dead “ought to be dealt with under the Turkish parliament’s roof. Any act or perception that runs to the contrary simply suggests that ‘we are the government, therefore we hold the power, and whatever we say should be regarded as correct. That violates the checks-and-balances system in the existing parliamentary order.”

Indeed, this atmosphere that Sen describes quite accurately is ironic, as the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government puts much emphasis on honoring democratic values in state governance. The old Turkey, they claim, meaning the era between the foundation of the republic in 1923 until the AKP came to power in 2002, failed to uphold the rules of a democratic state. Moreover, the AKP takes a special interest in criticizing the single-party era represented by the Republican People’s Party (CHP) until 1946, painting the perception that “they were bad, we’re good; they lacked conscience, we hold moral upper hand.”

Erdogan therefore apologized for a government decision that led to nearly 14,000 dead in Dersim, Tunceli in 1937, his face filled with anger and his voice high, demanding that CHP leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu, also from Dersim, Tunceli, apologize to the people on behalf of his party’s past mistakes. When it comes to attacking past mistakes and allowing people to speak about them tirelessly, AKP considers it all acceptable. Still, Erdogan has yet to extend an apology for the bombing by Turkish jets that caused the deaths of 34 villagers from Uludere on the Turkey-Iraqi border in December 2011. And it is difficult to claim today that the Turkish media can talk about that incident without self-censoring.

There is no doubt that Turkish democracy is far from perfect, but it’s nevertheless been accepted as one of the world’s developing and maturing democracies. This is also the reason it was accepted into NATO in 1952, and was also allowed to seek membership to the European Union. Its task now should be trying to perfect itself rather than slandering its past.