and again in 1971, 1980, 1993 and (however gently) 1997. Erdoğan himself was arrested on the basis of undermining Turkey’s secularism in 1998 when he was serving as mayor of Istanbul. He didn’t take immediately power as prime minister after the 2002 elections (the AKP’s co-founder Abdullah Gül initially served until March 2003) because of fears that an Erdoğan-led government would suffer the predictable fate of a military ouster. That’s one reason why Erdoğan presided over a series of problematic trials (Ergenekon) against military, opposition and media figures in the mid-2000s. Though the coup failed, no one certainly knew that in the initial, frightening and confused early hours. That plotters managed to shut down state television and a major international airport showed that the coup was seriously farTurkish cleric, played in the coup (as opposed to his followers within the Turkish military). As usual, the truth lies unreachably between Erdoğan’s state-sanctioned paranoia and utter blamelessness. But Erdoğan has already called in strident terms for the United States to extradite Gülen. It’s not clear how far Erdoğan is willing to shred relations with the United States unless Turkey has real evidence that Gülen was somehow involved from his home in rural Pennsylvania, which seems to strain credulity. When he first took power, Erdoğan and the Gulenists worked together to defeat the Kemalist elite. Increasingly, however, since Gulenists brought to light several corruption scandals in Erdoğan’s government, the president has turned on Gulenists, systemically removing them from key positions, including in the military.

But a diplomatic conflict with