Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, speaking to ruling AK Party's mayors at a summit in Ankara yesterday, stated that the government is in a fight to serve Turkey's southeastern cities no matter how much certain groups try to provoke the government's services. Touching on the issue of the Turkish flag that was removed from a flagpole in the southeastern city of Diyarbakır by a 16-year-old demonstrator, Erdoğan said the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) has institutionalized each square kilometer of the country contrary to opposition parties that have been deprived of making their presence felt in eastern Turkey due to their ideologies.Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan yesterday stated that the government is in a fight to serve Turkey's southeastern cities no matter how much certain groups try to provoke the government's services. Touching on the issue of the Turkish flag that was removed from a flagpole in the southeastern city of Diyarbakır by a 16-year-old demonstrator, Erdoğan said the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) has institutionalized each square kilometer of the country contrary to opposition parties that have been deprived of making their presence felt in eastern Turkey due to their ideologies. "We will never let any provocateur play upon the Turkish flag. Thanks to our [AK Party] love of the Turkish flag, we make our presence felt in each part of this country with our services and institutions." Erdoğan said that Turkey did not accept those kinds of provocations in its past and will not accept them in the future either.Referring to the Turkish flag issue, Erdoğan said the government would never shut its eyes to betrayals, provocations and banditry.Speaking at the AK Party municipality mayors' consultation and evaluation meeting, Erdoğan harshly criticized opposition parties and their joint candidate search for the upcoming presidential election on Aug.10. Erdoğan said that the joint candidate search would not work for Turkey's opposition parties since they do not have enough common ground to announce a joint candidate.Addressing the mayors, Erdoğan touched on the AK Party's principles on municipality services. Erdoğan said that the AK Party's main criteria when nominating a municipality candidate are knowledge, experience and capability. "More importantly, we [AK Party] try to announce a candidate that has adopted AK Party policies and principles. You [mayors] are not just municipality mayors who are accountable for coping with the physical problems of cities, districts and provinces, such as garbage collection. You are also those who will apply the AK Party's historical mission. I believe that you will give important services in your cities during your five year mayoral term."Erdoğan noted that the AK Party fights to reorganize unplanned organization, but it is not possible to change the urban sprawl in one or two terms and asked mayors to be leaders on this issue and leave better cities for the next mayors.Giving examples of cities in developed countries, the prime minister said that elected AK Party mayors should ask themselves how they could develop their own cities to reach developed countries' standards. "We [Turkey] can build excellent cities, we can clean our streets, and we can improve our infrastructure, but what is important is to capture the hearts of residents in the cities that you serve."Taking the seat as mayor of Istanbul between 1994 and 1998, Erdoğan stressed his own municipal perspective and said: "My municipality perspective is: Service is required, but it is never enough. The important thing is to capture hearts. You [mayors] are not only building cities, but also building hearts. You are responsible for protecting cities' residents." Erdoğan told mayors that they are not the owners of the cities but that they are the trustees of the cities.Touching on the issue of urban transformation, Erdoğan said the architectural perspective of Turkish civilization should be reflected in cities and districts, but they [AK Party] will not be in search of unearned income. He said: "As a reflection of the architecture of our [Turkish] civilization, we should support horizontal architecture as much as possible. We should not pursue or show-off with 50-100 storey buildings. Certain people got unearned income with these multistorey buildings. We [AK Party] need to be sensitive to this issue." Erdoğan also touched on disabled pedestrians' problems and said that municipalities do not work on this issue enough. He added that AK Party municipalities should pursue projects that ease disabled pedestrians' lives.