As the call to prayers in Istanbul gets louder – thanks to more sophisticated amplifying systems – the number and size of Turkish flags have grown in proportion. This is the fundamental conflict in Turkey today. On one side are the secularists, the heirs of Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey. On the other side are the Islamists, who are divided into moderate and fundamentalist factions. Since the landslide win of the moderate Islamists in the recent elections, the conflict between religion and politics has sharpened, at least at the symbolic level. In a country where women who wear headscarves are still banned from higher political office, the wife of the new president Abdullah Gul, has broken a taboo by wearing the turban. The army, the institution most committed to secular nationalism, has responded by boycotting the president’s swearing-in ceremony.