Turkey just had an election, and the Turkish people just administered the secular parties and the goons in the military a well-deserved kick in the rear end. The secular parties have for decades considered Turkey their private property, with elections a kind of formality to confirm their inheritance. If elections go the wrong way, they felt, that's no problem: the generals can always stage a coup and restore us to power. Indeed the military has staged four coups since 1960.

But not this time. When the ruling Justice and Development party nominated economist Abdullah Gul as president, the military began to threaten its usual thuggery, at which point Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan shrewdly called a new election. The ruling party won a thumping majority and the secular parties were soundly beaten. Now the elected lawmakers have approved Abdullah Gul as president with 339 votes, with two other candidates sharing 83 votes. The secular sore losers boycotted the balloting, recognizing that they were completely outnumbered.

Many in the West--including some conservatives--are visibly scared by the prospect of practicing Muslims ruling Turkey according to Muslim values. Yet the "separation of church and state" they invoke does not apply anywhere in the world except in America. Israel doesn't have separation of church and state: it is a Jewish country that openly worries about protecting its Jewish identity. Britain has an established Anglican church, and virtually all European countries provide state subsidies to religious institutions, including religious schools. Why can't Turkey, a Muslim country, stand up for Muslim interests and be governed by the Muslim values of its Muslim people?

Conservatives like to use the rhetoric of democracy, but many of them have forgotten the degree to which they have become apologists for secular despotisms throughout the Muslim world. Abdullah Gul may drink soft drinks instead of alcohol and his wife may wear a headscarf. But at least the guy was freely elected. I'm sure Musharraf, Mubarak and the Saudi royal family are familar with the best types of wine and Scotch, and we know how the Saudi princes completely case aside their show of piety when they are out of sight of their people. Yet these are unelected despots who rule with an iron hand. Must traditional Muslims choose between Islamic tyranny of the Khomeini variety and secular tyranny of the Mubarak variety?

No. Turkey, like Iraq, offers a better model. This is the model of traditional Muslims who support modernization and free markets and free elections. These traditional Muslims are willing to work with America and they are fiercely opposed to Al Qaeda and to the radical Muslims. Yet at the same time they believe that traditional Muslim values that enjoy majority support sometimes should become the basis of law. I'm not Muslim and most of the readers of this blog surely aren't either. We don't support all these laws, but then Turkey is not our country. Why should America or the West dictate how the Turkish people govern themselves? Why is secular thuggery preferable to Muslim democracy?