Egged on by the European Union and the Turkish army, Turkey's highest court has blocked a candidate from the country's ruling party from becoming president. Abdullah Gul, a close ally of Turkey's prime minister is currently foreign minister. The problem, from the point of view of the EU and the army, is that Gul is also a devout Muslim. his wife even wears a headscarf!

Turkey's leading secular party is worried that Gul will breach the secularism that has defined Turkey since the Ataturk revolution in 1923. Ataturk wanted Turkey to become a non-Muslim country overnight, and so he abolished the alphabet, cancelled Muslim holidays, closed the Muslim schools, outlawed Muslim clothing in public buildings, and replaced Islamic law with Swiss and German law.

It's not easy to convert a Muslim country into a secular European country overnight, and over the decades Turkey's Muslim identity has been seeping back. The curent ruling party, although sometimes described as Islamist, is more accurately described as traditional Muslim. It has presided over a period of unprecedented economic growth, has integrated Turkey into the world economy, has courted European Union membership, has made Istanbul into what Newsweek terms "one of the world's coolest cities," and has softened Ataturk's militant secularism without introducing either sharia or discrimination against non-Muslims.

Yet secular forces, inside and outside of Turkey, are worried. And they are not unwilling to use strong-arm tactics to subvert Turkish democracy. First the EU warns Turkey: remain secular or forget about applying to our club. Then the Turkish military issues its darkly-worded threats: remain secular or we might start shooting! And now the Turkish court, which is widely recognized as a pawn of the military, has blocked Gul's candidacy. The court's grounds are specious: not enough lawmakers were supposedly present to vote. But on other occassions even fewer lawmakers have made these decisions. And the reason there weren't enough lawmakers is that the leading secular party in Turkey deliberately boycotted the vote.

So now Turkey is headed for another election, and I suspect the ruling party will increase its majority. Yes, Ataturk may be spinning in his grave. Yes, the EU might continue to withhold membership. Yes, there are Americans across the political spectrum who seem to prefer a secular Turkey. But ultimately the future of the country is in the hands of the Turkish people, and it seems that as Muslims they would rather live in a Muslim Turkey. I, for one, see nothing wrong with that.