TURKEY: When a gunman fatally wounded a judge in Turkey's highest administrative court last Wednesday, it looked like a cut-and-dried case of religious terrorism.
A week later, the certainty that propelled tens of thousands on to to the streets to protest at what they saw as an Islamist assault on the country's secularist system has evaporated.
From the start, investigations failed to show any convincing evidence that Alparslan Arslan, the lawyer who shot the judge, was an Islamist. Even the widely reported claim that he shouted "Allah is great" before firing was denied on Monday by one of four other judges injured during the attack.
Instead, media reports paint a picture of a man steeped in the violent, paranoid world of right-wing nationalism since his days as an Istanbul law student.
Judging by the 17 men whom police are questioning in connection with the shooting, Arslan also has friends in patriotic places. Most of the suspects are small-time mafiosi, and at least one man claims he received money for his work.
But media attention has focused largely on Muzaffer Tekin, a former army captain whose CV reads like an encyclopaedia of Turkey's shadowy anti-democratic opposition.
Suspected by police of being the gang's mastermind, Tekin's links with some of Turkey's more notorious organised crime bosses have made headlines for days.
For sceptics, his arrest this weekend after an apparent suicide bid dealt the final death blow to talk of an Islamist plot.
Instead, Turks began to suspect they were once again watching the machinations of what they call the "deep state". The phrase is shorthand for ultra-nationalist elements close to the security forces willing to take the law into their own hands to defend what they see as Turkey's best interests.
"We know the murderer's identity," said Ergun Babahan, a columnist with mass-market daily Sabah. "Whenever there is an increase in demands for democracy, freedom and justice, his signature is on acts designed to frighten people back into the authorities' arms."
After decades spent watching the state cover up its relations with the criminal underworld, few Turks expect police fully to get to the bottom of last week's shooting.
However, it has escaped nobody's notice that the ruling Justice and Development party, or AKP, was the worst affected by the attack.
Accused by secularists and the pro-establishment media of encouraging Islamic extremism with their religious-minded brand of politics, several ministers were physically attacked by crowds as they tried to attend the judge's funeral last Friday.
The next day, Turkey's normally mild-mannered army chief called on the public to keep its reactions going.
Relations between the government and the staunchly secular state have never been warm. Much of the judiciary and army remains convinced AKP's fast-fading pro-European reformism is a ploy aimed at weakening their influence before turning Turkey into a copy of Iran.
Recent comments by AKP members about the need to rethink Turkish secularism have polarised society even further, but commentators say the main reason secularists want to see the back of the present government lies in the likelihood that it will impose its candidate when the current president's term comes to an end next May. Though his duties are largely ceremonial, the president is seen as the figurehead of Turkey's secular state.
Veteran commentator Mehmet Ali Birand has no doubt the killing of the judge was a veiled warning to the AKP.
"Something's become very clear: a secular lobby will not let [ prime minister Tayyip] Erdogan get the presidency," he says. "If he tries, it will be as bloody as we have witnessed."
For months, opponents of the government have been calling on it to take the country to early elections. Now, some of its supporters are joining in.
A political analyst sympathetic to the AKP, Cengiz Candar, points out the growing signs of stress in Turkey's economy.
"To ward off more tension and potentially even worse crises ahead", he says, "the public must be asked its opinion."