Turkey: Little rouses Turkey's diehard secularists more than speculating about the true intentions of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the sharp-suited politician who went from Islamist firebrand to prime minister espousing what he likes to call "conservative democracy".
Remember, they say, the bristling rhetoric of 10 years ago when Erdogan was mayor of Istanbul and a leading member of the now-defunct Welfare Party.
Democracy, he said then, was like a streetcar: "You ride it until you arrive at your destination, then you step off."
This was the same man who declared: "One cannot be a secularist and a Muslim at the same time"; and, "The Muslim world is waiting for the Turkish people to rise up. We will rise up! With Allah's permission, the rebellion will start."
He is the man who sat at the feet of rebel Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar in a photograph taken years ago but seized on gleefully by Turkey's secular media during the 2002 election that brought Erdogan's Justice and Development Party (AKP) to power.
Then there was his public recitation of a poem containing these lines: "The mosques are our barracks, / the domes our helmets,/ the minarets our bayonets, / and the faithful our soldiers." The 1997 incident was to cost Turkey's future prime minister dear - he was subsequently convicted of inciting religious hatred.
Small wonder, then, that there are those who baulked at Erdogan's efforts to reassure Turks following the AKP's election success, a sweeping victory that made it the first party to have a clear majority since 1987.
It was largely a protest vote, analysts said, against those politicians who had presided over rampant corruption and a crippling recession.
Up to then, the AKP - and Erdogan - was viewed with suspicion by many in a country founded on the idea of secularism.
"Secularism is the protector of all beliefs and religions," Erdogan said post-election, sounding more like Ataturk than the man who just a few years earlier had called for Islamic revolution. "We are the guarantors of this secularism and our management will clearly prove that."
Four years on, the party has confounded expectations by instigating more political, economic and human rights reforms than any other government since the foundation of the state.
It speaks of democracy, modernisation and reform couched in the language of centrist populism and takes a strong pro-Europe line. There is very little overt talk of religion and the party resists any attempt to frame itself within the spectrum of political Islam.
"We have more similarities with the Christian Democrats in Germany than we have with any Islamist party," says Mehmet Muezzinoglu, the AKP's Istanbul chairman, acknowledging that the party's Islamist past has proved difficult to shrug off.
"Some people still see us this way, as an Islamist party, but that is not the case.
"We have individuals within the party who are religious but the party itself has nothing to do with religion. We reject the use of religion and the language of religion in politics."
So far there have been few signs of the party harbouring a hidden Islamist agenda as critics claim, although failed attempts to relax the headscarf ban and criminalise adultery have raised eyebrows. As has the party's questioning of Turkey's constitutional definition of secularism.
"We Turks," Erdogan explained in a 2004 interview, "are closer to the Anglo-Saxon understanding of secularism" (that is, religious freedom).
Outside Muezzinoglu's office, there is a framed copy of a Newsweek cover story on Erdogan. "Knock, knock," goes the headline. "How a conservative Muslim has brought Turkey to Europe's door."
The party offices are modern, even trendy, all frosted glass, wooden floors and numerous workings of the party symbol - a glowing light bulb.
There are women in headscarves and women without.
The outside of the building is wrapped in a huge banner showing Erdogan addressing a crowd of supporters. "All for Turkey," it reads. Police skulk nearby - the party's offices in Ankara have been targeted by bombers in recent months.
Many wonder what the AKP's next step will be. Turkey is set to elect a new president next spring, and parliament and government elections are scheduled for later in the year.
Some believe Erdogan is eyeing the presidency, long a bastion of the avowedly secular elite.
For people like Muammer, a leather worker from Istanbul's conservative Eyup district, this would be cause for celebration.
He votes AKP because "they are honest, clean and do what they promise".
It is an altogether different prospect for Melek Tugba, an antique restorer and mother. "I don't trust them," she admits. "I think they use religion no matter what they say. We are all Muslims but there should be no relation whatsoever between religion and politics.
"Sometimes I wonder what Ataturk would think if he could see what is happening in Turkey today."