At the level of national politics, however, these efforts seem to have benefited the party most closely associated with an Islamist position. You let them in, and the next thing they will try and do is turn the 19th Hole bar into a mosque.
Golf is fairly new to Turkey, and most players are foreign-born businessmen.
The few Turks who have taken to chasing the little white ball are usually very wealthy, and unlikely to dash from Friday prayers for an afternoon tee-time. But the idea that the secular elite imagines that they might do so in order to infiltrate yet another sacred domain is not. By luring deputies away from Ciller's center-right party, the military reduced the coalition's majority to an unworkable minority. The putsch began with a series of briefings at the headquarters of the Chief of the General Staff, where officers detailed alleged fundamentalist attempts to infiltrate all areas of Turkish society. I will not even get in a taxi driven by a man with a beard anymore out of general principle.