From the distance they are reminiscent of Easter Island statues, empty faces staring eyeless across the Bosphorus from treeless slopes north of Istanbul.

US military chiefs want to use Turkish bases in the event of war

Turks hope they are monuments to a bygone and error-filled past.

But here the faces are those of 100 unfinished houses, neatly spaced across miles of scrub, and the past is a time of government corruption and stifling bureaucracy.

This development stopped developing 10 years ago, and the case is still dragging through the courts.

Rejecting old order

Many Turks do believe that this sort of thing is over.

It would be a mistake to call what happened in November "people power", like the force that toppled Milosevic in Serbia or Ceausescu in Romania.

But the elections that delivered a startlingly complete victory to the Islamist-based Justice and Development Party (AK) did mark a massive rejection of the old order.

Now, however, the old order may be about to have its revenge.

Many Turks are opposed to a US-led war on Iraq

For a start, the government of Prime Minister Abdullah Gul has not delivered fast enough on the expectations of social and economic reform for many people - how could it?

Now one of the most conservative forces in Turkish society, the army, is relishing its renewed importance, as US generals come calling with wish-lists of bases and facilities for the looming assault on Iraq.

Mr Gul has risen to the occasion, touring the region and trying to galvanise his southern neighbours into something like a common view on the crisis, while simultaneously co-operating with his useful friends in Washington.

Overplaying his hand?

This is not forgetting that the clear majority voicing opposition to the war is from the same electorate which put him into power just 10 weeks ago.

Regional foreign ministers are currently meeting in Istanbul

It must be like steering one of those flimsy fishing boats which veer precariously among the supertankers that crowd the Bosphorus.

He may be overplaying his hand just a little.

The government has been trying to get senior figures from Iran, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Syria to a meeting in Istanbul this week.

It has all been more difficult than was expected, and that might not be unrelated to an incautious remark by Turkey's foreign minister.

He reminded anyone who might be interested that Turkey was still owed some money from the oilfields at Kirkuk in northern Iraq, dating back to the carve up of the Ottoman empire at the end of World War I.

'Imperial echoes'

The memory that one could not help but conjure up was that of Amman, Damascus, Cairo and Riyadh trooping to Istanbul in a manner that their subservient forebears 150 years ago might have recognised.

Even now the palaces of Istanbul are a bit unsubtle in their imperial echoes.

After all, what may be aggressively sorted out in the next few months has its origins in an end-of-empire business at least as unfinished and troubling as those empty houses by the Bosphorus.