Wait For It, You Turkish Secular Democrats...

"Do you expect the conservative democrat AK Party to raise an atheist generation? That might be your business, your mission, but not ours. We will raise a conservative and democratic generation embracing the nation's values and principles." Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan

While his remarks have drawn outraged criticism from the secular Republican People's Party, they cannot be surprised by this candid admission, proudly and unequivocally stated as the Freedom and Justice Party's ultimate goal. Which, of course, is to turn Turkey back on the righteous track of pious Islamism that Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, in his historical confusion, shunted it away from.

In so doing, carefully calibrated to bring Turkey into the realm of reasonable religion-free governance reflecting those of Europe - not the Middle East, where outright corruption, tyranny, and a biased judiciary looked for guidance from Islamic clerics and law based on Sharia, which resulted in a freer, wealthier society - Turkey advanced in social and economic progress, unlike the Muslim countries it was neighbour to.

The vigilance and dedication of the Turkish military, dedicated to the external protection and security of the country, part of which mission internally was to ensure that Kemal Ataturk's groundbreaking foray into modernism was not overturned, succeeded for many generations. It took a clever man like Tayyip Erdogan and his equally astute colleagues to successfully convince enough Turks to vote them into power.

Giving them the breathing space and the trust generated by the country's financial security, to ensconce themselves comfortably at the reins of power, initially temperately, and with growing boldness and dedication to effect the desired change, as the years progressed and one election after another gave them the numbers they required for confidence and majority rule.

And now the Turkish military is a vestige of what it had been. Its powerful generals - dedicated to secular freedoms continuance in their country in a democratic foundation they trusted, to advance Turkey's agenda in concert with the West while maintaining sympathy with the East - have been emasculated. Arrested on charges of sedition, of trying to overthrow the new state Islamist agenda, they languish.

"What does it mean, really, that the state raises religious youth? Is this the first step towards a religious state?", ingenuously asks Mehmet Ali Birand, a columnist with the Hurriyet Daily News. How utterly precious, if not downright prescient: what, precisely, does he think it 'means'?

Can liberal, secular Turks be so unaware, so oblivious that they must ask?