A strategic choice faces Turkish voters in tomorrow's general election. It was called after the armed forces refused to endorse the likely president chosen by the moderate Islamist government led by Recep Tayyip Erdogan last May.
To resolve the ensuing constitutional crisis and following a widespread mobilisation of the secularist opposition, Mr Erdogan called these elections, which he is widely expected to win. They have been dominated by the continuing struggle between the thrusting socio-cultural forces represented by his Justice and Development party (AKP) and the urban secularist elite dominated by the army that remains unreconciled to them. The result will determine Turkey's political future.
This makes the election important for other Europeans as well as for Turkey's Middle Eastern neighbours, all of whom have a stake in seeing tension over its political identity resolved in a peaceful and stable fashion. For the last five years Mr Erdogan's government, which secured a strong majority in 2002, has presided over rapid economic growth, falling unemployment and low inflation.
All this was in sharp contrast to the previous period - and the increased activity has been concentrated very much in the Anatolian heartland which is also the AKP's political base. There is a deep cultural gulf between that base and the westernised middle class largely concentrated in the Istanbul region, exacerbated by mass migration from the countryside to that city over the last 20 years.
Social and cultural change matches these economic ones. The AKP arose from the failure of previous Islamist movements; but it has combined reformist instincts with traditional religious observance in a modernising blend matching that of its popular support. As one Turkish observer says: "It is a conservative modernity, modernising with tradition, instead of top-down modernity". This makes it all too easy to misinterpret both the nature and direction of the party. It is not a fundamentalist movement, but has gradually and pragmatically come to terms with Turkey's secular, republican inheritance. Not all of its female supporters wear the Muslim headscarf, but many do and there is an emerging pluralism on the issue among its growing number of women activists.
Confronted with these changes, secular republican Turkey has proved to be rigidly intolerant and increasingly unwilling to adapt. Hopes that the country's agreed pathway towards membership of the European Union would ease this polarisation have been upset by growing hostility in EU member states and a backlash nationalism in Turkey itself. Parallel fears arise from the war in neighbouring Iraq. It has empowered the Kurdish region, creating worries about secession, terrorism and army intervention in Turkey. The AKP deserves to win these elections; but it remains unlikely that they will usher in a greater willingness to compromise between such embattled visions of Turkey's future.