I'm talking about Turkey, right? Wrong. These words were published just days before Turkey's attempted coup by Alon Ben-Meir, a professor of international relations at New York University, about Israel. Obviously there are differences between the two situations - whatever its democracy's problems, civilian rule in Israel is entrenched. Dr Ben-Meir is hoping ex-military chief Gabi Ashkenazi might lead a unified opposition at the next Israeli election, not a column of tanks in the streets. But it remains true that the states of the Middle East are confronting four basic constitutional problems a century after the demise of the Ottoman Empire, which itself wrestled with such problems for a century before that. A policeman between portraits of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, right, and the republic's founder, Mustafa Kemal "Ataturk". Credit:AP

1. The problem of the leader The coup attempt in Turkey took place against the backdrop of a sustained attempt by the country's president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to change the constitution and give his office far greater powers at the expense primarily of parliament. Even before the coup attempt, he was moving to purge the judiciary. Two general elections in quick succession had failed to deliver the required mandate for such change, and resistance from Mr Erdogan's longtime party ally Ahmet Davutoglu saw him pushed out of the prime minister's job in favour of the more pliant Binali Yildirim. Before the coup attempt, Mr Erdogan had declared that MPs of the opposition HDP - a party which stands in the way of his plans for the presidency - should be stripped of their immunity and charged with terrorism offences. He has now also declared the Gulen Movement - whose US-based leader Fethullah Gulen he accuses of masterminding the coup - to be a terrorist organisation. Mr Gulen has in turn accused Mr Erdogan of pursuing "one-man rule", a problem that has a very long history in the Middle East.

A man prays at the Sultan Suleyman Mosque in Istanbul. Credit:AP Photo 2. The problem of religion - and of secularism As his sobriquet "Ataturk" (father of the Turks) suggests, the modern Turkish republic's first leader, Mustafa Kemal, was seen not only as a political leader but as a national parent, who set about moulding his "children" by changing what men and women were allowed to wear, how they wrote their language and the way their society was organised, all in the name of secular modernity and progress. A man could be charged for wearing a hat without a brim, women were discouraged from wearing headscarves and men from growing beards. To this day there is a taboo against any public criticism or ridicule of Ataturk, and Mr Erdogan has also sought to punish those who tell jokes about him. A century before Ataturk's time, the Ottoman emperor Mahmoud II also changed dress codes and installed portraits of himself in Western uniform in government offices, even though this violated Sunni Islam's teachings on icons. It is a practise that has been enthusiastically adopted by leaders of post-Ottoman secular republics seeking to present themselves as the "crown of the nation", from Saddam Hussein and Hosni Mubarak to Bashar al-Assad.

Then prime minister Tony Abbott meets Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi in New York in September 2014. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen Ataturk oppressed his people in the name of secularism; Mr Erdogan has been accused of Islamising Turkey by stealth. The Gulen Movement were once considered his allies in this endeavour, but now the movement's extensive network of schools is being targeted by the government. The question of what belongs to Caesar and what to God has dogged all the successor states of the Ottoman Empire. It is a question that becomes more pressing if societies try to abandon Caesars altogether and move towards democracy. When Egyptian general and defence minister Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi led a coup against elected Egyptian president Mohamed Mursi, one of the chief charges was that Dr Mursi's Muslim Brotherhood was not a "patriotic" and "nationalist" organisation but one with a religious agenda. Mr Sisi has since sought to portray himself as someone who can propose religious reform, winning effusive praise from then prime minister Tony Abbott among others. Yet this is a path other military dictators dressed in civilian clothes have tried to walk, including Pakistani leader Pervez Musharraf, who wrote for foreign newspapers about "enlightened moderation" in Islam while suppressing political opposition at home. Leyla Zana, right, and fellow MP Selim Sadak are greeted by supporters in Ankara in 2004 after a decade in jail. Credit:AP

Loading That this depiction of foreigners serves political purposes is clear. After all, not all contributions coming into Egypt from abroad are unwelcome, and in some cases laws against foreign support have a marked ideological slant. The Iraqi and Syrian governments may both complain about foreign fighters and their foreign backers, but in that case their own sources of military support from abroad can hardly go unremarked. If the countries of the Middle East wish to achieve greater democracy and through it greater prosperity, they must grasp the truth that democracy is never simply a matter of who has the most ballots. Taking a long look in the mirror and rethinking the compact between each nation's competing domestic constituencies may be harder work than railing at foreigners, but in the end it is likely to yield more lasting rewards.