Ten years ago, when Algerians were about to elect an Islamist government, the army cancelled the elections. The country has been ravaged by a terrorist war ever since. Five years ago, when the Islamist 'Welfare' party came to power in Turkey, the Turkish army forced the Islamists out and the courts banned their party. Islam in politics really frightens pro-Western armies. Turkey is going to the polls again in November, an election precipitated by the country's acute political and economic crisis. A new Islamic party, the Justice and Development Party, may well emerge as the biggest party and coalition leader in the new government, so panic buttons are being pressed both in the West and in Turkey. But there is another way of looking at the political earthquake in Turkey. If the Justice and Development Party (AK) were a classic radical Islamic organization, fanatically anti-Western, fiercely intolerant, and instinctively authoritarian, then there would obviously be exciting days ahead for Turkey. But the AK insists that it is nothing of the sort. Instead, it claims to be just a conservative, 'pro-family' party that favours religious freedom. Party leader, Tayyip Erdogan, was once jailed for inciting religious hatred, but he insists that he has undergone a transformation. 'Ideology is a thing of the past,' he says, and his party even approves of Turkish membership in the European Union. New messiah Many people worry that once in power Erdogan might turn out to be an old-fashioned fanatic who would try to force a deeply conservative form of Islam down everybody's throats. Given the secular and even anti-religious constitution that was Kemal Ataturk's legacy to the country, and the army's habit of intervening against anyone who threatens its vision of a modern, 'European' Turkey, Erdogan has to say he has changed, but why trust him? But a remarkably large number of Turks are willing to take Erdogan at his word: 72 per cent of potential AK voters, according to opinion polls, have never voted Islamist in the past. Besides, if he does turn out to be a wolf in sheep's clothing, the army would doubtless intervene as usual. But if he isn't a fraud, then some interesting possibilities open up for Turkey. The crisis that has given Erdogan his chance may herald the collapse of the old political class whose Byzantine games have held the country back for so long. The prime minister, Bulent Ecevit, whose refusal to retire despite crippling illness caused the existing coalition government to explode, first came to power almost 30 years ago. Power was the only name of the game, which is why the main coalition partner of Ecevit's Democratic Left Party could be the far-right Nationalist Action Party - a perfect recipe for stalemate and inaction. Old war horses Turks are so fed up that none of the three parties in Ecevit's coalition would get the 10 per cent of the national vote needed to win representation in the next parliament. A new political spectrum is taking shape in which the dominant parties may be Erdogan's AK on the right and a new moderate left party, 'New Turkey', founded on the ruins of the Democratic Left Party by Ismail Cem, a Westward-looking politician untainted by corruption. The first benefits of this realignment may appear at once. It was the right-wing Nationalist Action Party that blocked the legal changes - ending the death penalty, giving the Kurdish minority full language rights, and other human rights reforms - needed to make Turkey eligible for EU membership. But every other party is in favour, and it is but natural that the parliament would approve of the reform package last week, well in time for Turkey to be accepted as a full candidate at the EU's December summit in Copenhagen. That would let it enter EU well before the end of this decade. The bigger transformation may be a reconciliation between the secular and the religious traditions in Turkish society. The same struggle still rages even in the West, but somebody needs to demonstrate that there is no problem with being Muslim, modern and democratic all at the same time, and the Turks are probably best placed to do it.