First I do ask about the troop build-up. One man says there has been a lot of activity, another says not more than normal. They seem to agree that there will be no invasion unless there is a big terrorist attack. If that happens, then probably something will be done. I sip the tea. The men tell me they call it "smugglers tea"… it's from Syria. All the sweeter, I say.
One man seems to be a spokesman for the group despite not wearing the team uniform. No cap or moustache and he's wearing a light-weight suit jacket, so perhaps he's something of a free-thinker, or perhaps it's the modern day dress of a Kemalist. He is attacking the ruling party, the AK, which I've described below as mildly Islamic. "They are deceiving people. It is wrong to use religion like that. The nation should come first in politics. Religion is between each man and Allah."
The statue of Ataturk at our backs should be beaming at such sentiments. But the founder of modern Turkey, clutching a book of his speeches, is as stern as ever. His revolution in the 1920s and 30s was quite astonishing. He transformed the tattered remains of the Ottoman empire into a modern nation state and then dragged it, with remarkably little screaming, into the West's version of the 20th Century. He outlawed traditional dress, banned the Arabic script, introduced universal education and a legal system based on the Swiss code, praised the emancipation of women, and shoved religion right out of politics. Here he is revered by many as a secular saint.
Although no-one would dare to do so here, there is much one could mock about Ataturk. Except he was so extraordinarily successful. He balanced on the high wire of history and everything tells you he should have fallen off, that his revolution should have ended in failure and the triumph of conservatism. But it didn't. He stayed on the wire, won, and it worked.
Indeed secularism, the doctrine that religion has no place in politics, has become in itself almost untouchable, holy writ. That is why it filled some with such horror that their country might elect a president whose wife wears a headscarf.
It is his legacy that some fear the AK, a religious party, is trying to unravel, as several comments to an earlier post point out. Thanks for so many interesting remarks. Ayse Sarici, I think that is the first time someone has made a nice comment on the way I look for about 20 years. And you are right that the proximate cause of the election was parliament not agreeing on a presidential candidate - but I think the e-coup coloured and pre-ordained that failure. Fascinating analysis from Ronald Kramer.