Saturday is my day off from being Reuters correspondent in Gaza and I usually sleep until noon.  This Saturday things didn’t go to plan.

My 7-year-old son Abdel-Rahman and his sister Dalia, who is 12, came home early from school, as they have been doing their mid-term exams, to wake me up and ask me to take them for breakfast at a seafront restaurant not far from Gaza’s port.

We got in the car, and for some reason I didn’t take the usual coast road. The decision probably saved our lives.

We had barely taken our table overlooking the sea when we heard one explosion, then another, then a third.

Abdel-Rahman began to cry and Dalia covered her ears with her hands.

I rushed to the front to have a look and saw smoke pouring from the area of the port, and a series of explosions. I figured it was air strikes. Then I heard the roar of Israeli jets.

I radioed my colleagues in television and pictures and told them what I had seen. I tried to phone Reuters’ Jerusalem office — but the mobile phone signal died.

I went to the restaurant’s reception and called the office, but I had to keep running back to my children and wife, were, to calm them down.

“Dad, don’t leave us,” cried Abdel-Rahman. Dalia wept. “Dad, I am afraid. Why? Why did that happen? Do they want to kill us?”

I had no answer as the explosions continued to rock the place that is our home.

I was getting reports by radio about locations that had been hit, including the main police headquarters and another security compound near our house.

What later emerged was that more than 225 people had been killed in dozens of air strikes against the Hamas-ruled strip. Israel said the attacks were in response to daily rocket fire by Gaza militants, which intensified after Hamas ended a six-month ceasefire. On Saturday, one Israeli man was killed by a rocket after the Israeli strikes began.

My wife tried to call her friends in the house, but couldn’t get a signal. Then one of her friends got through to her and told her that there was shattered glass everywhere and the sky overhead was thick with smoke.

So we had to stay put in the restaurant and I had to struggle between coping with the tears of my children and the need to get to my office in Gaza.

Colleagues warned me against driving as my car could be hit if I unwittingly drove near any of the security compounds that the Israelis were attacking.

Then there was a lull in the bombings, and I put my family in the car. I took back roads, and drove as fast as I dared with hundreds of people milling around the streets.

“Dad, be careful,” Dalia said.

We arrived home to see that the adjacent Hamas security compound had indeed been bombed, and there were crowds in the street.

“I saw body parts and some people had their heads cut off,” one man said. “It was a real massacre, Israel has started a war,” said another.

In the compound, ambulance workers were still carrying out the injured as bodies, uniformed and in plain clothes, lay on the ground. Women wept and children huddled in the arms of their mothers and fathers.

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has blamed a group with "external linkages" for coordinated attacks which killed more than 100 people in Mumbai. The language was reminiscent of the darker days of India-Pakistan relations when India always saw a Pakistan hand in militant attacks, blaming groups it said were set up by Pakistan's spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, to seek revenge for Pakistan's defeat by India in the 1971 war.

An attack on India's parliament in December 2001 triggered a mass mobilisation along the two countries' borders and brought them close to a fourth war.  That attack was blamed by India on the Pakistan-based Kashmiri militant groups Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed - hardline Islamist groups with links to al Qaeda.  Both have been associated with the kind of "fedayeen" attacks -- in which the attackers, while not necessarily suicide bombers, are willing to fight to the death -- seen in Mumbai.

So does the assault on Mumbai spell the death-knell for what had been gradually warming ties between Pakistan and India?

Pakistan has condemned the attack, just as it did when gunmen attacked the Indian parliament in 2001. And the Pakistani context today is quite different from that of 2001. Then a military ruler, former president Pervez Musharraf was in power, whereas Pakistan is now run by a new civilian president, Asif Ali Zardari, who has made clear he wants peace with India over Kashmir.

But Singh's comments, made in a televised address to the nation, were remarkably strong for the usually mild-mannered prime minister:

“It is evident that the group which carried out these attacks, based outside the country, had come with single-minded determination to create havoc in the commercial capital of the country," he said. “We will take the strongest possible measures to ensure that there is no repetition of such terrorist acts. We are determined to take whatever measures are necessary to ensure the safety and security of our citizens."

The strength of the language may have been fuelled by the scale of the Mumbai attacks, and could refer to either Pakistan or Bangladesh, which has also been accused by India of harbouring militant groups. But it sounded similar in tone to that of Singh's  predecessor, Atal Behari Vajpayee, who following the 2001 parliament attack warned Pakistan that India's patience was wearing thin. And they also contrasted with India's reaction to bombings which killed at least 63 people in the western city of Jaipur earlier this year, when the Indian government notably refrained from pointing a finger at Pakistan.

So was this a deliberate attempt to undermine India-Pakistan relations?  And if so, what will that mean for Pakistan's fragile civilian democracy? Zardari has staked his reputation on making peace with India to improve trade and help lift Pakistan's struggling economy.

Much will depend on how Singh, under pressure to show a firm hand ahead of a national election due in India by May 2009, reacts.

(Rueters photo of Taj Mahal hotel in Mumbai/Punit Paranjpe)

Did the "Bali bombers" end up as martyrs or monsters? That's what many must be wondering after the three young men convicted of the Bali nighclub bombings in October 2002 were executed in the dead of the night last weekend in an orange grove on Java.

(Photo: Funeral of bomber Imam Samudra, 11 Nov 2008/Supri)

The run-up to the executions turned into a media circus. The three men from the Jemaah Islamiah group -- Imam Samudra, Mukhlas, and Amrozi -- were interviewed extensively by domestic and foreign media before they faced a firing squad last Sunday. They were defiant to the end, calling for more attacks like the one they perpetrated that killed 202 people, most of them foreign tourists. They had, in fact, become media celebrities and the public was fascinated with them. But as monsters or martyrs?

Mainstream Indonesia was nervous and unhappy about the public spectacle that "infuriated relatives of the victims and prolonged their pain", the Jakarta Post said.

Foreign Minister Hasan Wirajuda said the executions should not have been so publicised. "Perhaps that's the cross we have to bear in an open and democratic Indonesia," he said, using an interesting metaphor when speaking about Islamists. Thousands of people poured onto the streets for the funerals after the bodies were flown by helicopter to their home towns. People chanted "Goodbye Syuhada (heroes)" and "allahu akbar" as the bodies of Mukhlas and Amrozi were taken to an Islamic boarding school where Jemaah Islamiah's spiritual leader Abu Bakr Bashir led prayers.

The feared revenge attacks have not taken place, though Australia said it has credible information that militants may be planning some. Jemaah said the Bali attacks were intended to deter foreigners as part of drive to make Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, part of a larger Islamic caliphate.

(Photo: Protester and poster of bombers, 9 Nov 2008/Beawiharta)

But leaders of the two main Muslim organisations -- Nahdlatul Ulama and Muhammadiyah who together account for nearly three-quarters of Indonesia's 230 million people -- know there is very little support for that among the Indonesian people who generally practice a tolerant brand of Islam.

"The bombers show a wrong nature of Islam," Din Syamsuddin, chairman of Muhammadiyah told the Jakarta Post. "The use of violence and attacks cannot be tolerated in our religion. "Glorifying the three Bali bombers as mujahid is a grave mistake. It stems from a delusion that such an honor can be achieved through bombings and shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’ (God is great)," said Masdar F. Mas’udi, deputy chairman of the Nahdlatul Ulama (NU).

The Bali bombers were clearly hoping their executions would give them the status of martyrs. But the classic definition of that in both Christianity and Islam are those who died defending their faith against their persecutors -- not waging an unprovoked attack on an unsuspecting population to further a vision of an Islamic caliphat in Southeast Asia.

Will the Bali Bombers go down in Muslim history as heroes or martyrs? Or will they be seen as deluded young men who were induced to commit mass murder in a time of post-911 madness?

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Following are some Reuters videos from the funeral and protests against the executions:

Here's a slideshow of pictures from the bombings to the execution of the bombers.

The  global financial crisis has become a topic of feverish debate for al Qaeda sympathisers on militant Internet forums.

According to  the U.S.-based SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors  al Qaeda-linked propaganda on the Web and translates it for the benefit of security analysts and counter-terrorism officials, the militant chat rooms have been buzzing for weeks with excited comment.

“Now Sheikh Osama bin Laden has an historic opportunity to crash America completely. Al Qaeda, which has caused America to be ruined economically in Iraq and Afghanistan, has an opportunity to deliver the fatal blow,” wrote a member of a Turkish militant forum recently.  “Al Qaeda could bury America into the landfill of history with an operation similar to or greater than September 11.”

In a discussion on al-Hesbah, a password-protected forum linked to al Qaeda,  one participant gloated that the U.S. economy is “on the precipice”, SITE reported.

He continued: ”Now is a golden opportunity and a gift from Allah that we should not lose. If America is hit now, by Allah, it will never survive, until Allah permits it … I can see that victory is closer than expected.”

Such ”chatter” has attracted the attention of Western intelligence officials. Ernst Uhrlau (pictured), head of Germany’s BND foreign intelligence agency, told Reuters in an interview this week that the financial crisis had emboldened some Islamist militants but it was too early to say if it would help them attract new recruits.

“We’re hearing some first voices on this. Some see the fact that the United States has been so shattered by the financial crisis, and that its dominant role in the world is shaken, as confirmation the West can be beaten,” Uhrlau said.

Al Qaeda has always placed high value on economic targets. The Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, razed in the Sept. 11 attacks, were chosen both as an iconic New York landmark and a symbol of U.S. capitalism. It’s a fair bet that the next statement from Osama bin Laden or his deputy Ayman al-Zawahri — perhaps in the  less than two weeks remaining until the U.S. election — will make great play on the current crisis and boast of how the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have drained the U.S. economy.

But it’s doubtful whether all of this translates into a heightened security threat to America. The official threat level has remained unchanged for more than two years, and the fact is that al Qaeda has failed to land a blow on U.S. soil since Sept. 11, 2001.  In the Reuters interview, Uhrlau questioned whether it was capable of staging more attacks on the scale of 9/11. 

For the time being, its sympathisers can only wait, hope — and put forward their own ideas. In another discussion monitored by SITE, one participant suggested a plan for an attack aimed at bankrupting a U.S. bank. Some contributors praised the idea, but one was more sceptical.  “Why bother, their economy is collapsing by itself,” he wrote.

In downtown Beirut, resurrected from the rubble of the 1975-90 civil war, one is spoilt for choice of smart restaurants, trendy bars and lively clubs. Performances by sexy Lebanese divas and belly dancers contribute generously to Lebanon’s gross domestic product by attracting Gulf Arab tourists enchanted with Lebanese talent and beauty — not necessarily in that order.

There is isn’t a single international designer who has not found his or her way to Beirut’s elegant boutiques and jewellery shops. On the other hand, Lebanese designers such as Elie Saab are dressing Hollywood stars these days.

On the streets of Beirut one can see the latest Mercedes, Jaguars and BMWs jostling with Maseratis and Ferraris, even before they appear in Europe. Appearances aside, Lebanon has one of the best-educated peoples in the Middle East, with its young men and women having a global reach into the worlds of business, banking and academia.

It was comforting to see downtown Beirut teeming again with tourists enjoying the delights the city can offer. Beaches were packed with Beirutis in bikinis and hotels were overbooked with returning visitors who left during the crisis that erupted between the pro-Iranian opposition led by Lebanon’s influential Shi’ite Hezbollah and the U.S.-backed Sunni-led Lebanese government after the assassination in 2005 of former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri. This crisis has been put on hold following a Qatari-brokered agreement in May.

Yet underneath the glitzy facade is a country mirroring the real currents of militancy and Sunni-Shi’ite sectarianism unleashed by the Iraq war.

The conflict in Iraq has brought back to the surface the historical Sunni-Shi’ite feud throughout the Middle East. It overthrew a Sunni dictator, brought Iraq’s Shi’ites to power and tipped the balance of power in favour of Shi’ite Iran and its Hezbollah allies in Lebanon.

This, in turn, has incensed Sunni Arab countries and left a bitter legacy across the Arab world, Lebanon in particular which is traditionally a proxy battleground where regional forces settle their disputes.

In Lebanon, the Sunni-Shi’ite rivalry is in danger of taking a vicious turn. Fundamentalist Sunni Salafi groups have established a foothold in the northern city of Tripoli, which admittedly had been a hotbed for Sunni Islamist groups in the 1980s before they were crushed by Syria, then the dominant power in Lebanon.

Now these forces have found their way to the southern city of Sidon and to eastern Lebanon and some Palestinian refugee camps.

Added to the Iraq war factor is the humiliation inflicted on Sunni prestige in May by Hezbollah when it overran West Beirut, traditionally a Sunni bastion, after a row with the government. That proved without a doubt that they called the shots in the country.

As a result, Sunni groups are seething, with some tilting towards radical Islamism.

The growing influence of these groups is no longer just in the poor neighbourhoods of Tripoli but it has reached the more affluent parts of the southern port city of Sidon — through mosques and preachers setting out to indoctrinate young Sunnis.

A friend recently recounted how her nephew and some of his friends, all American-educated and from affluent Sunni conservative families, were victims of this indoctrination and turned into zealots after attending prayers at a mosque near Sidon.

“Now he spends his days in his room reading the Koran and listening to militant chants. In his eyes we are non-Muslims and following the infidel way of life. Nobody is able to communicate with him or get through to him,” the friend told me.

Lebanon, it seems, is being used once again by its politicians and their regional patrons as a laboratory.

Anti-Syrian Sunni Lebanese politicians, backed by Sunni heavyweight Saudi Arabia, have not only ignored the growing influence of Salafi groups but have courted them in some instances in their attempt to roll back the rising tide of Shi’ite influence embodied by Hezbollah.

Syria, which after the 2003 U.S.-led war encouraged and facilitated the flow of jihadists to Iraq and into Lebanon, has warned of growing Islamist militancy in north Lebanon and said a vehicle used in a suicide attack in Damascus last week had crossed into Syria from a neighbouring country, implying it could have been Lebanon, Jordan or Iraq.

With these local and regional actors playing with fire, how long before their policies backfire

One of the problems with countries like Syria - secretive and authoritarian - is that whenever a bomb goes off or someone is assassinated, the list of possible suspects is extensive.

One can draw up a long list of enemies who could have plotted and carried out Saturday’s rare car bomb attack on a major road near a Syrian state security complex and an intersection leading to a famous Shi’ite Muslim shrine. The blast, which killed 17 people including a brigadier general and his son, poses another test to Syria’s reputation for keeping a tight grip on dissent and maintaining stability in a troubled area. 

High on any list of possible perpetrators are Sunni Salafi jihadis active in Syria now, and who for years were able to cross through the Syrian borders into Iraq to fight U.S. troops. This stopped recently when Damascus tightened its borders following pressure from Iraq and the United States and opted for a policy of detente and moderation starting with indirect peace talks with Israel through Turkish mediation and a diplomatic drive to end its international isolation.

The jihadis, angry at Syria cutting off their routes, relaunching peace talks with the Jewish state and detaining their militants, could have turned their guns against Damascus. And this could have involved a mix of personnel — foreign expertise helping local Islamists.

Another motive for the latest attack could be Sunni-Alawite tensions in Lebanon. Sunni militant groups based in northern Lebanon have been fighting a sectarian war with Lebanon’s Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shi’ite Islam which has close links to Syria, whose ruling elite has been dominated by minority Alawites for over four decades.

Syria said an Islamist suicide bomber was responsible for the attack and that the vehicle had entered Syria from a neighbouring Arab country on Sept 26. It did not name the country but Syria’s Arab neighbours are Iraq, Lebanon and Jordan.

Assad, whose country has dominated Lebanon for three decades and was forced to withdraw its troops after the assassination of former prime minister Rafik al-Hariri, warned this month of a danger from what he called foreign-backed Sunni extremists in the predominantly Sunni city of Tripoli. He called for a solution to “the rising threat” of Islamist militants in the city.

The bombing was reminiscent to attacks that were carried out in the past by Syria’s Islamist opposition led by the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood which has been locked in a bloody feud with the secular government since the 1980s when late President Hafez al-Assad launched a major crackdown against their followers and supporters in the northern city of Hama.

That left thousands of Muslim Brotherhood activists dead — some estimates are as high as 20,000 –  languishing in prisons or forced underground.

A riot by Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists at a military prison near Damascus in July suggests the bitter fight between the authorities and the Brotherhood is far from over. There were conflicting accounts of the incident but human rights groups said Syrian security forces killed dozens of prisoners during the riot at Sidnaya prison.

A Syrian official said the disturbances began when Islamist inmates took prison officers hostages and set conditions for their release. Special anti-riot units were brought in from Damascus to end the riot which was quashed violently, according to various accounts.

Syria, which has been ruled by the secular Baath Party since 1963, has sometimes used Islamist groups as proxies to pursue its interests in neighbouring countries, even though it showed no mercy domestically to the 1982 uprising at Hama by the Muslim Brotherhood.

It will likely pursue the hard line policy against militants but Saturday’s attack, which follows the assassination of the military commander of Lebanon’s Hezbollah in Damascus and a senior military aide to President Assad in northern Syria earlier this year, has dented Syria’s watertight security image.

The killing of Imad Moughniyah, in particular, who was on Washington’s most wanted list for two decades for hijackings and suicide bombings against U.S. Western and Israeli targets worldwide, raised serious questions about whether the Assad regime was master in its own house. 

More generally, the recent attacks suggest that Syria itself may become victim to its government’s dabbling in jihadism, like so many other sorcerers’ apprentices across the region who tried to harness Islamist militancy for their own ends only for it to blow back on them.

For years Algerian authorities have said the country’s Islamist armed groups are on their last legs. Attacks are sometimes described as the last kicks of a dying horse.

However, the militants have proved themselves to be resilient. Bombings and ambushes over the past week have caused at least 65 deaths, making it the bloodiest in years, and the toll so far for August stands at more than 80. That is the worst month in a long time.

It is true that the security forces have been effective in containing the armed groups in much of the countryside, apart from the Kabylie region.

And the intense rural-based violence of the 1990s is highly unlikely to reoccur - an understanding struck in 1997 between the army and the original leaders of the Islamist rebellion laid the foundations for the end of the worst of Algeria’s political violence.

But a shift in tactics in 2007 to Iraq-style suicide bombings - delivered by car, motorbike and in person - has been a relative success for the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat. There is apparently no shortage of young men willing to offer themselves for duty as kamikaze attackers.

Twinned with use of the al Qaeda brand, they have helped the insurgent leaders cast a pall over Algeria’s efforts to emerge from its troubled past.

Quite why that should be is a puzzle. The state is much stronger, and wealthier, and better equipped than it was in the 1990s.  It is no longer an international pariah. So why are its security forces making such heavy weather of the fight? Is it because the militants are strong? Or is it because the security forces are weakened? Is the overall policy of offering amnesty to the rebels sensible? Anecdotal evidence suggests that the reconciliation policy of the government is a major factor in demotivating the army and police. What do you think?

There can be few countries where the art of the coup is so finely honed as in Turkey, adapting as it does constantly to the spirit of the age, spawning over the decades its own enigmatic lexicon – the “Coup By Memorandum”, the “Post-Modern Coup”, the “Judicial Coup”, the ill-starred “e-Coup”.

Now newspapers (largely pro-government newspapers it should be said), gorge on tales of coup plots dubbed ‘Glove’, ‘Blonde Girl’ , ‘Moonlight’ and devote pages to a shadowy militant group code-named “Ergenekon”. Two retired military commanders, supposed members of the group, have been arrested at their homes on military compounds; a bold step by civilian authorities against an army that jealously guards its privileged status. Critics of Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan call the arrests, also netting businessmen and journalists, a ‘revenge action’ for moves by the conservative judiciary to shut his AK party on charges of Islamist subversion.  Ertugrul Ozkok, editor of Hurriyet, a newspaper critical of the government ,  suggested authorities were riding roughshod over judicial processes. If  things are as they seem, he said, “none of us can feel comfortable any more. Any one of us can be taken from our homes and held in custody.”

Erdogan, facing a possible court ban from party politics, might also rest uneasily these sultry July nights.

Some coups have shaken Turkey to the core, others brought more subtle change. All have dealt a blow to democracy. A 1960 military putsch sent a prime minister and two other ministers to the gallows (as well as testing the unity of the forces themselves), four in the last 50 years have toppled governments. Turkish political folklore is rich with other conspiracies supposedly involving the “Deep State” – a nebulous fraternity of militant nationalists in the security services, military, judiciary and civil service.

Why such a rich “coup culture” in Turkey?

Perhaps it’s something to do with the way the rails of Turkish democracy snake along so narrow a ledge. To one side the abyss, the fear of division and chaos many Turks seem to carry within. To the other side the forbidding, towering heights of a powerful and distrusting Pashas, or generals. At every tight turn the train will scrape against the granite face of one or teeter precariously towards the edge of the other.

Now is such a turn.

The Pashas, through their Turkish military optics, see a nation seduced by Tayyip. Critics say the judiciary, civil service, universities, even the presidency and security services, are being opened to infiltration by Islamists. AK’s move to allow the Muslim headscarf in universities only underlines the perils.

Erdogan denies any Sharia ambitions. His party, embracing economic liberals, centrists and nationalists as well as religious conservatives, has steered a soundly pro-Western course (arguably far more pro-Western than that of the ‘secularist’ parties AK first swept from office in 2002 polls), winning international profile, building a strong economy and gaining support across the population.

And here, in Erdogan’s success and popularity, lies the Pashas’ dilemma.

In all their interventions and coups, the Pashas, for many the trusted safeguard of the secular order, have never acted flagrantly against popular will. The 1971 “Coup by Memorandum” came as a relief to millions after months of political violence and strikes. The armed forces chief handed what amounted to an ultimatum to the prime minister to restore order or it would “exercise its constitutional duty”. That did the job, memories of the bloody 1960 coup still being fresh. The premier stepped down and a provisional cabinet under military supervision duly restored order.

The 1980 “September 12 Coup” followed a resurgence of streetfighting between leftists and nationalists. The tanks rolled this time, the streets returned to calm, politicians were rounded up and left to cool their heels at detention centres on the Aegean coast.

By the 1990s, rolling tanks along the streets was less acceptable. The Pashas, however, again saw themselves compelled to act to defend the secular state of Ataturk against a government espousing Islamist ideas.

This was the genesis of the 1997 “Post-Modern Coup”.

Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan fell cleanly to a well-orchestrated campaign of pressure from the military in conjunction with business, the judiciary, media and political leaders. If a column of tanks did roll down a mainstreet somewhere, it was only by way of a salutary reminder of pre-post-modern days. Democracy might have emerged that much stronger though, some say, if the Pashas had kept their nerve and allowed Erbakan to fall under the weight of his own folly.
Erdogan’s hold on power is, in any case, surer.

Erbakan enjoyed only about 20 percent support when elected and his popularity had slumped in office. Erdogan garnered 47 percent support at the 2007 election after a tense wrangle with the General Staff that became known as the “e-Coup” affair. Just before midnight on April 27, the armed forces General Staff posted a declaration on its website cautioning Erdogan, in so many words, against putting up his right-hand man, Abdullah Gul, as president. Erdogan did the unthinkable and publicly, if courteously, admonished the military the following day. His gamble then in calling the 2007 election greatly strengthened his position. Gul was duly installed as president. Breathtaking events.

History suggests the greatest fear haunting the military at such times is that of division; division – ethnic and political — in the country and division in the armed forces themselves. The image of the police officers encroaching on military domain to arrest two generals was poignant, even if entirely within the law.

Conspiracy theorists in Turkey – and there are very many — would see the only way out for the “Deep State” in first robbing Erdogan of his supreme weapon, his popularity.

This, then, is where the Ergenekon allegations, regardless of facts yet to be established, have for many the irresistible ring of truth.

Newspapers speak of a plan to unleash a campaign of mass protests, bombings and shootings this month pitching the country into chaos and turning the population against Erdogan. Today brought an armed attack at the United States’ Istanbul mission that killed three policemen and three gunmen.

The military would then be relieved of any internal debate and forced to intervene to rescue the country. Erdogan would be gone, the country saved from an Islamist threat and the military effectively restored to the position of privilege which has been eroded by democratic reforms in the last six years. The risks would be enormous for Turkey, the outcome a tragedy for Turkish democracy and the country’s European mission.

Appropriately, the name “Ergenekon” goes to the heart of Turkishness.

In Turkish mythology, Ergenekon was a deep valley in which the ancient Turks lived, trapped and isolated from the world for four centuries, until a grey wolf led them out through a hidden pass. Free then to thrive, they went on to defeat their enemies and take their rightful place as a noble nation.

Erdogan will know that if he abandons caution and submits too much, too recklessly, to his Islamist wing, the population, those rising middle classes, will almost certainly turn against him. The game will be up. The Pashas’ instinct and their role is to suspect the worst of the politician, but while they seek to ‘guide’ events, they know confrontation could devastate the economy and leave them with a chalice they don’t cherish. Beyond the General Staff, in the darker recesses of the Deep State, there may be those less temperate. Government and military, courts and commentators might do well to stay their hand and keep a cool head these summer months; and remember the long years in Ergenekon.