From the perspective of his unquestioning supporters in Turkey and the region, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is the only leader who is active in the Middle East trying to correct all the wrongs from Syria to Iraq and Egypt. Despite coming under increasing fire from some Islamist quarters in Turkey over his government’s handling of foreign policy, Erdogan is also aware of the continuing support he has from his grassroots Islamist followers, and showers them with rhetorical remarks pleasing to their ears.

He revived a hobbyhorse of his over the weekend, for example, and hit at the UN Security Council, saying its inability to stop the killings in Syria would “go down in history as a dark page.” Addressing a crowd of followers in Istanbul on Sunday, Sept. 2, Erdogan said his young supporters has started a campaign which he too supported against the Security Council with the slogan, “The world is greater than the five.”

Revealing a surprising lack of knowledge about when today’s UN was founded he said, “If a decision was taken (to establish the UN) under the circumstances that prevailed in the environment of World War I, does it mean this has to continue like this forever?”

Erdogan also said that although he was being criticized “for speaking too much,” he was merely doing his job as the elected leader of a country of 76 million people.