After a Break, Turkey's Prime Minister Again Courts Controversy Turkey's prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, center, had largely avoided comments on divisive public issues since antigovernment protests over the summer. ISTANBUL - In his time in power, more than a decade now, Turkey's prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has alienated large portions of the population for his seeming intrusions into private lives. He has told women how many children they should have, has sought to outlaw abortion and adultery and to limit alcohol consumption and once, oddly, went on a public tirade against white bread. Many Turks who had once supported Mr. Erdogan's democratic overhauls, like securing civilian control over the military, came to see such pronouncements as grating and abrasive, even evidence of a rising authoritarian style. That contributed to the sweeping antigovernment protests over the summer that presented the gravest crisis to the leadership of Mr. Erdogan and his Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party, known by its Turkish initials, A.K.P. Now Mr. Erdogan, who had largely tempered his divisive language in the months after the unrest, has raised a storm of protest, saying this week that he wants to outlaw coed dormitories at state universities, and even extend the crackdown to off-campus housing shared by male and female students. Once again, Mr. Erdogan, with his words, has pushed Turkey's culture wars to the fore, underscoring deep divisions between the secular and the religious, and prompting the sort of controversy many even within his own party had hoped to avoid in the aftermath of the protests and just before Turkey enters an election cycle. Invoking his credentials as a conservative, and saying that the government receives "intelligence" about what goes on inside coed housing facilities, Mr. Erdogan was quoted in the Turkish news media as saying to a weekly meeting of his party's lawmakers: "Anything can happen. Then parents cry out, saying, "Where is the state?" These steps are being taken in order to show that the state is there. As a conservative, democratic government, we need to intervene. On Tuesday, political talk shows that normally take on a number of issues devoted much of their broadcasts to the dispute set off by Mr. Erdogan's comments. Some newspaper columnists seemed to relish the topic and the return, after the withering of the protest movement, of Mr. Erdogan's words whipping up the cultural currents. "We are face to face with a prime minister who thinks it is his right to impose his moral sentiment into our homes, and control our personal space with his governors and his police," wrote Ezgi Basaran, a columnist in the left-leaning Radikal. In setting off another cultural controversy, Mr. Erdogan risks re-energizing the emotions of his critics that drove the summer's protests. But, given how divided Turkish society is, he could also galvanize his conservative supporters ahead of elections. "I live in an all-girl dorm; it's my choice and I'm happy about it," said Ezgi Kurtal, a history student at Bosporus University here. But I do not support Erdogan's comments. What business does a prime minister have in dictating what sex an adult can live with? "We thought he got the message not to interfere with people's lives at Gezi," she added, a reference to the park that was at the center of the summer's protests. I guess we were wrong. The latest controversy comes as Turkey renews long-stalled negotiations to join the European Union. Its foreign policy effort to influence the Middle East also seems in disarray, given its previous support to the ousted Egyptian president, Mohamed Morsi, and its policy of supporting the rebel opposition in Syria as the international community seeks a diplomatic solution. Mr. Erdogan emerged from the protests seemingly as powerful as ever domestically - his religiously conservative base, which makes up nearly half of the electorate, stuck with him - even as Turkey's image abroad was tarnished. But the protests also set off debate within the upper reaches of the A.K.P. about the party's direction and the future of Turkish democracy, just as the country heads into an election cycle that begins next year with a vote for municipal governments that is seen as a test of Mr. Erdogan's grass-roots support. Sebnem Arsu and Ceylan Yeginsu contributed reporting.