Turkey's building boom includes 17,000 new mosques built by the government since 2002. The state is planning an enormous mosque, more than 150,000 square feet in size, to loom over Istanbul on a hill on the Asian side of the Bosphorus. Secularists are outraged, and an opposition leader, Republican People's Party (CHP) MP Mehmet Ali Ediboglu, calls this just another step in a process that, he claims, will end in an Islamic republic.

Whither Turkey? Erdogan's visit to Washington last week is a reminder of how important that question is. President Barack Obama has called Turkey a critical ally and has spoken of his friendship for the Turkish leader. Yet Erdogan is trying to change the Turkish constitution from a parliamentary to a presidential system -- with the hope, of course, that he will be the president. His opponent's charge that Erdogan's model is Russia's Putin, a virtual dictator by legal means.

A visitor can only wonder where Erdogan's country is headed. Consider four scenes from the road:

1) Lecturing in a public university on Turkey's western coast -- the country's secular region -- I saw a small but significant number of women wearing headscarves. The government not long ago overturned a ban on headscarves in public places. From the American point of view, that seems like a good thing and a move in favor of religious freedom. Turkish secularists, however, consider it the thin end of a wedge.

2) In Amasya in north-central Turkey sits the graceful Kapiaga Madrasa. It was built in the sixteenth century by Sultan Bayezit II, an enlightened ruler who welcomed Jews and Muslims expelled from Spain in 1492. The octagonal structure is constructed around a central, arcaded courtyard. A visitor encounters what sounds at first like the buzzing of bees. In fact, it is boys studying religious texts.

The day I saw the madrasa I was wearing a baseball cap purchased earlier at a Turkish naval museum. It was decorated with a Turkish flag and a historic warship. The students looked at me with a certain aloof surprise. I didn't realize that I was making a political statement, but my Turkish friend explained that the symbol was nationalist and secular in their eyes.

3) On the way to Edirne, we drove past the exit to Silivri. A summer resort, Silivri is also home to a huge prison. It houses hundreds of top military officers along with journalists, lawyers, and members of Parliament accused of plotting against the government. It is Turkey's answer to the Bastille, the notorious jail for political prisoners in pre-revolutionary France. With 47 reporters incarcerated, Turkey has been called the world's leading jailer of journalists.

4) Arriving in Istanbul at night after a trip to the Anatolian heartland, my friend drove down Baghdad Avenue -- the Rodeo Drive of Istanbul. Rock music and short skirts were on order, not headscarves and religious chanting. Political prisoners seemed far away. But the boys in the madrasa will soon be adults and the women in headscarves will be college graduates. What kind of a country will they build, I wondered, when they come to Istanbul and look up at its grand new mosque? And what will Turkey's future mean for Americans and our own long and troubled quest to build better relations with Muslim countries?





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