>>Can't remember where, but I read a piece last week talking about the Army as the keeper of Ataturk's vision.
I read that also. While I can imagine him exhorting the armed forces to protect the secular state almost a century ago, I'm not sure it's a viable mechanism in 2016 to stage a coup if the country is going astray. Meanwhile I found images of bearded fundamentalists with gleeful expressions beating up restrained soldiers. Doesn't bode well.
"... They ne'er cared for us
yet: suffer us to famish, and their store-houses
crammed with grain; make edicts for usury, to
support usurers; repeal daily any wholesome act
established against the rich, and provide more
piercing statutes daily, to chain up and restrain
the poor. If the wars eat us not up, they will; and
there's all the love they bear us."
-- Shakespeare: Coriolanus, Act 1, scene 1
