Charlie Rose Talks to Recep Tayyip Erdoğan

You just received strong support in local elections, but many say they fear a descent into authoritarianism. You shut down Twitter and YouTube earlier this year, for instance.
If I were a dictator, how could anyone direct such an insult at me? This Twitter does not have an office in Turkey. It’s an American company, [so]they are part of the informal economy. There are court decisions, for example. The court decisions have to be respected. If they don’t respect the court decisions [to close certain accounts], then what we do is we shut them down. [The ban on Twitter was overturned in early April by Turkey’s constitutional court.]

Following the Taksim Square protests of 2013 and the seven dead, do you have regrets? What about future protests?
It happens everywhere, unfortunately. If you resort to violence, then such unwanted consequences occur. Who is it that resorts to violence? It’s not the police. It’s the people in the square who believe in the games that the illegal organizations play. And when they attack the police using stones or Molotov cocktails, the police react. We never said no to protests. What we do is we provide places for demonstrations, but people say they want to demonstrate anywhere they like. They can demonstrate. I also can demonstrate and have such freedoms, but I go to the place that is designated.