Justice & Law Quote by Recep Tayyip Erdogan

“Paramount” does a lot of work here: it sounds like a moral absolute, but it also functions as a permission slip. By anchoring his premise in “the need to secure human rights,” Erdogan borrows the language of liberal democracy as a kind of diplomatic passport. It’s hard to argue with the first sentence; that’s the point. The second sentence is where the real politics live, because it defines what a “secure” rights regime is supposed to feel like: citizens “do not have to fear the State,” they “give it direction,” they “confidently participate.” The emotional target is anxiety. The promise is psychological safety, not just formal protections.

The subtext is a negotiated bargain between order and freedom. “The form of rule should be such” implies that institutions can be tuned like machinery: tweak the system and fear disappears. It’s an attractive managerial fantasy, especially in countries where the state has historically been experienced as distant, punitive, or captured by elites. The phrasing also nudges responsibility downward: the ideal citizen “participates” and helps “give direction,” subtly reframing dissent as a failure of civic contribution rather than a legitimate check on power.

Context matters because Erdogan’s long tenure is defined by that tension. Early-era reformist rhetoric about democratization and EU-aligned rights talk eventually collided with a governing style critics describe as increasingly centralized and intolerant of opposition. Read against that arc, the quote works less as a neutral theory of government than as a claim to democratic legitimacy: the state is not to be feared because it is, by definition, the instrument of “the citizen” - as long as “direction” aligns with the administration already in charge.