A series of political parties have called for the Turkish state to be more tolerant of public religious expression -- and been serially disbanded by the secular establishment. The latest incarnation, known as the Justice and Development Party (AKP), holds a majority in parliament, elected the current prime minister and seeks control of the presidency. This last move has provoked a standoff with the military, which has a constitutional role in defending the secular state. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has called for parliamentary elections July 22 to demonstrate his party's strength. That support increasingly comes not from the rural religious but from Turkey's growing middle class -- educated, entrepreneurial, pious and resentful of the secular elite.

Secularists accuse the AKP of seeking a slow-motion Islamist revolution. Turkish writer Mustafa Akyol -- a young, pro-American moderate conservative with a tendency to quote philosopher Leo Strauss -- regards this as a serious overreaction: "The AK Party has traces of Islamism, but it is moving toward becoming a conservative, Muslim democratic party," more akin to the Christian Democratic parties of Europe. So far, the AKP has been pro-capitalism, pro-European Union and a defender of Islamic family values, instead of being an advocate of Islamic law.

Turkish secularism has sometimes been called a political model -- yet even with its undeniable achievements, it is hard to imagine the export of this model to highly religious nations elsewhere in the region. But if the AKP proves itself as a center-right religious party, genuinely committed to pluralism, that will be a reverberating example. A democratic transition in Egypt, for instance, is not likely to be achieved by Jeffersonians and secularists. It will require moderate Islamists who direct conservative religious sentiments into democratic channels. Some believe that a "moderate Islamist" is a mythical creature, because Islam itself is essentially theocratic. But Muslims in Indonesia and Bangladesh, Morocco and Turkey are attempting to show otherwise. And America has a stake in their success.

Both sides in Turkey could undermine these hopes by overreaching. If the secular establishment were to disband the AK Party before the election, it would be a setback to democracy. If the AK Party, after a successful election, were to insist on a divisive presidential choice, it would call its long-term motives into question. Leaders of the AK Party have a serious responsibility beyond the defense of headscarves: to show that "desecularization" in the Muslim world is consistent with pluralism and freedom.