The Ottoman Empire had already been in retreat for over a century when the Young Turk revolution broke out in July, 1908. Some of the Young Turks hoped to save the whole empire; others wanted to abandon the empire and rescue an independent Turkey from the wreckage. The latter group won the argument, in the end, and although the rest of the empire fell under European imperial rule 10 years later, Turkey itself was saved. Now, exactly a hundred years after the Young Turks, the country is plunged into another constitutional crisis.

In March, the public prosecutor brought a case to Turkey's highest judicial body, the constitutional court, demanding that the ruling AK (Justice and Development) Party, re-elected only last year with an increased majority, be shut down for trying to subvert the secular state. He also wants Prime Minister Tayyip Recep Erdogan and 70 other senior AK party members banned from politics for five years.

Last week the government struck back, arresting two retired generals and 23 other people on the charge of "provoking armed rebellion against the government." One, Gen. Hursit Tolon, was the former second-in-command of the army. Police allege that they were members of a state-backed gang that is suspected of a number of murders of prominent public figures with the aim of destabilizing Turkish society and forcing military intervention.