This makes a recent speech by General Hilmi Ozkok, the army's chief of staff, interesting and, in some respects, troubling.

ECONOMIST: Turkey and the European Union

Excerpts include details of two separate planned coups concocted in 2004 that were quashed by the then chief of the general staff, Hilmi Ozkok.

ECONOMIST: Turkey and its army

Perhaps even more telling was a declaration by General Hilmi Ozkok, the chief of Turkey's general staff, that Cyprus was a matter for the politicians.

ECONOMIST: Turkey's government

And on March 26th Turkey's chief of the general staff, Hilmi Ozkok, announced that he wanted Turkish troops to enter northern Iraq only in full co-ordination with the Americans.

ECONOMIST: Turkey's promises were always too hard to keep

On the other side of the debate, however, some ardently secular-minded writers have accused General Hilmi Ozkok, the unusually mild-mannered chief of the general staff, of being too soft on the government.

ECONOMIST: Turkey's army

Some hawkish generals were retired, for all their kicks and screams, by the chief of the general staff, General Hilmi Ozkok, a liberal by Turkish army standards, and one who does not share many generals' distaste for Mr Erdogan over his Islamist past.

ECONOMIST: Turkey's politics: All-powerful but not at ease | The