The near-impossible task facing Turkey's Westernized intelligentsia before Erdogan had been to break away from the lure of neoimperial irredentism abroad, and at home to reform Islam into a matter of personal choice - in other words, to make Islam separate from the State and distinct from the society. The Kemalist edifice, uneasily perched atop the simmering Islamic volcano, had always been unstable. Today it is an empty shell. Today's Turkey is a regional power of considerable importance which bases its strategy on the concept of neo-Ottomanism, while denying its existence. Neo-Ottoman Turkey's interests and aspirations no longer coincide with those of the United States or Europe, and they are diametrically opposed to the interests of the traditionally Orthodox Christian nations in the Balkans.