Turkey’s general elections last July might well mark a milestone in the history of this overwhelmingly Muslim yet resolutely secular republic. The Justice and Development Party (AKP) not only secured what is by Turkish standards an astonishing victory—46.6 percent of the votes and 340 of 550 seats in parliament. It has also sent a signal that Turkey now nurtures an interpretation of Islam that is in harmony with modern values such as democracy, liberalism and capitalism.

This synthesis has never before been seen. In Turkey, as in the Muslim world generally, modernization has typically been regarded as a cause advanced by secularists and resisted by religious people, both traditionalist and fundamentalist. In the past decade, however, Turkey has presented a striking reversal of this truism. While the “Islamists” of the AKP arose as the most dedicated proponents of liberal reforms and integration with global markets, most of Turkey’s staunch secularists have turned bitterly anti-EU and anti-American. A devout, mosque-going Turkish Muslim is today much more likely to support the country’s EU accession bid than a resolutely secular follower of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the country’s modernist founder.