DARKMARKET

many moderate conservative parties in Europe refer to themselves as Christian Democrats.

But Turkey boasted another ideological tradition of immense power - Kemalism. Named after modern Turkey's founder, Kemal Atatürk, its guiding principle proposed the complete separation of Church and state. The ubiquitous presence of Atatürk's image in shops, homes, offices, barracks, hospitals and prisons reflected a deep reverence for his legacy of secularism among Turks (as well as a fear of arrest for non-compliance).

Kemalism, however, comes in a variety of flavours. Its two most fervent supporters come from the secular middle-class elite: intellectuals, professionals and civil servants on the one hand, and the so-called Deep State on the other. Both view the AK Party, and each other, with suspicion.

The Deep State is an appropriately sinister name for the military- industrial complex that acted as the ultimate arbiter of Turkish politics in the post-war period. As one of only two NATO members to share a border with the Soviet Union (the other was Norway), the country played a key role in the Cold War, and its allies, led by the US, were happy to turn a blind eye to the egregious abuses inflicted by the military on its own population.

During its repeated interference in political life, Turkey's security establishment sank its teeth deep into the country's economy as well, until it was sometimes hard to distinguish between the predator and the prey. It protected this enmeshed and lucrative involvement by appealing to Kemalism: if it considered its business interests were threatened by the fragile democratic order, the military would intervene, claiming the need to protect the Atatürk heritage. By tradition, the armed forces let nothing or anybody stand in their way. To paraphrase an old Turkish saying, 'Shake hands with the Deep State and it'll rip your arm off.'

But for the last fifteen years or so successive Turkish governments have instigated a series of reforms, partly in a bid to meet the member- ship criteria of the European Union. Notwithstanding fears that it has a hidden extremist Islamist agenda, the new rulers from the AK Party have pushed through some of the most liberal changes in Turkish society, such as the abolition of the death penalty. In another attempt to consolidate the primacy of the rule of law, the AK Party