They are politicians and journalists. They are bankers, bureaucrats, and businesspeople. They are writers, artists, university rectors, and teachers. They are lawyers and doctors, judges and generals. They live in Istanbul, Ankara, and in between, have second homes by the sea, travel frequently, and earn more than their fellow citizens. They have drivers and housekeepers. The very rich among them are generous philanthropists.

They are all members of Turkey's "secular establishment". This is crude shorthand for a broad swathe of society, mostly from the urban middle and uppermiddle classes, who have come to be identified with entrenched power in an increasingly competitive society. By "power" - and, again, the term is crude - is meant position, wealth, education, access, comfortable lifestyles and, above all, entitlement.