But when the military recently threatened to settle Turkey's disputed presidential elections, they approved, suggesting just how hard it is to sort Turks into familiar political categories.

"Someone needs to threaten them," Dogu said. "They've gone too far."

By "they," he meant the Justice and Development Party, or AKP, which has governed Turkey for the past four years under PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan and which is (depending who you talk to) either the hopeful face of a new moderate Islam or the moderate face of radical Islam's new hope.

By "too far", Dogu meant the AKP had chosen one of its own - Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul - to be the next president. Turkey's staunchly secular Constitutional Court agreed, declaring the first round of presidential voting void on the grounds there was no parliamentary quorum when the vote for Gul took place. Of course there wasn't: the opposition had boycotted the ballot, knowing it didn't have enough votes to win.

"I don't want someone who wears a headscarf in the presidential palace," Dogu said, referring to Gul's wife. "It's okay if it's an Anatolian headscarf. But I don't want them wearing Arab headscarves."

Anatolian Turks wear headscarves because that's what they've always worn - but an Arab headscarf is political, and he believes the AKP won't be satisfied until every woman in Turkey is under one.

Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who founded the Turkish Republic in 1923, imposed a strict secularism on Turkish society, banning religion from the public sphere. In recent weeks, demonstrators have taken to the streets in massive support of Kemalist secularism. Westerners may be tempted to sigh with approval, imagining this as an outpouring of sympathy with liberal Enlightenment values. They would be mistaken.

The AKP's opponents say they don't want Turkey turned into another Iran. But it is not clear that the AKP has any intention of doing that. What is clear is that it poses a threat to the power of the secular ruling class, of which a dismaying number are authoritarian ultra-nationalists.

This is not to diminish their concerns about the AKP, whose origins in radical Islam are not a matter of dispute. But the AKP says it has outgrown these sentiments and is now fully committed to democracy and a looser version of secularism. It swears it does not seek to impose a fundamentalist tyranny. The government has confined its enthusiasm for Islamic law to the most modest of sops.

Meanwhile, Istanbul has become more prosperous. Starbucks stores have opened on Istanbul's largest boulevard. Billboards still feature half-naked women; transvestites still swish down the streets. New construction is everywhere. The AKP has thrown Turkey open to foreign investment. It has deregulated the economy; since the AKP took power, it has grown by a third. It has tamed inflation, stabilised the currency and presided over a jump in per-capita income.

The state sector, controlled by the secular bureaucracy, has been reduced. Margaret Thatcher would not have disapproved.

The AKP was elected in large part because previous secular governments had for so long, and so badly, mismanaged the economy.

A casual observer might also expect that because the Turkish protesters are enemies of Islamic extremism, they are friends of the US. Not so. The secularists here are if anything more hostile to the West than the AKP. Many secularist legislators voted to deny US forces the right to pass through Turkey on their way to invade Iraq. At the recent rallies in Ankara and Istanbul, protesters held up signs denouncing "ABD-ullah Gul". This is an anti-American pun: The letters "ABD" stand for "USA" in Turkish. U.S. camera crews were abused with chants of  "Go home, CIA spies."

Finally, it is the AKP, not the secular establishment, that is plumping for Turkey's entry into the EU. The nationalists fear that the union will interfere with their war against Turkey's restive Kurdish separatists. The European Commission has issued a stern warning to the Turkish military: Stay out of politics or it will hurt your EU bid.

Last Sunday's protests in Istanbul took place under blue skies. Turkey's young secularists were laughing, singing nationalist songs, flirting. Necdet, a middle-aged man, was enjoying lunch with his family. He was keen for the military to exert its influence. "It's necessary," he said. "It's the military's constitutional role."

But how, I asked, is that compatible with democracy? After all, the AKP won the last election handily. It would win again if elections were held today.

"There is no such thing as absolute democracy, anywhere. If the AKP takes the presidency, democracy is over here anyway," Necdet replied. "They haven't changed their stripes. Once an Islamist, always an Islamist. There's no such thing as moderate Islam."

"So why do you think the EU is so opposed to military intervention?" I asked. "Surely they don't want a Taliban regime in southern Europe?"

"They want to split us up into Kurds, Armenians and Turks. That way they can reduce our influence in the region and control the resources of the Middle East."

This is a deeply held belief. Turks are raised on an unremitting diet of this Ottoman paranoia, which is now so thoroughly merged with the secularists' legitimate concerns that it is difficult to tell where one ends and the other begins. It is hardly a solid foundation for a mature democracy. Indeed, the concept of "democracy" is generally poorly understood. At lunch the other day, I asked our shy young waiter what he thought of Gul.

"I don't know. But democracy is good," he shrugged.

"So who are you going to vote for?" I asked.

He looked horrified. "I never vote."

Lest anyone think I'm pessimistic about Turkey's future, I'm not. The AKP will probably continue to do a fine, moderate job, particularly because it knows that the military is all too eager to fire up the tanks. Turkey will continue to function reasonably well, compared with other Muslim countries. Istanbul will still be a glorious place to live. Most Turks are either moderate Muslims or moderate authoritarians; true extremists on both sides are in the minority, and when the military takes power, it has always given it back after a time.

But don't make the mistake of thinking that "secular" here means "liberal, democratic and friendly to the West." That, it decidedly does not.

Claire Berlinski

Special to The Nation

ISTANBUL 

Claire Berlinski is the author of "Menace in Europe: Why the Continent's Crisis Is America's, Too".