The little town of Barr is one of a string of villages and towns on Alsace's Wine Route, a very picturesque wine-growing region in northeastern France, about an hour's drive from Strasbourg.

The first time we drove through it two years ago on the way up to visit a castle high above the town, I took no notice of it the charming half-timbered houses dominated by the spires of a beautiful old church, the narrow and winding cobble-stoned streets, and the fountain in the square of the town hall looked like those of two dozen other Alsatian villages.

When we visited the region again last September, I was struck by the sight of children playing in the streets, some thing that one rarely sees in French villages, and on closer inspection, they seemed to have middle-eastern features. We decided to stop, and were pleasantly surprised to discover that in this picture-perfect Alsatian village nestled amid rolling hills of vineyards live a sizable Turkish community, with its halal Kebab cafs and corner shops.

A young woman wearing a hijab who runs a corner shop told me that her parents came to Barr 30 years ago. They seemed generally in a sombre mood as the horrific attacks in New York and Washington took place just days earlier, but they received us very warmly. A young man proudly took me to their new Islamic Centre a few minutes outside town, where the imam who had recently arrived from Turkey was leading the midday prayer.

I have not visited Turkey, but if what I saw in Barr last September, and in Mecca during Haj some years ago where the Turkish pilgrims made up among the biggest number, (a great deal of whom came by coaches from Germany where they had migrated), three quarters of a century of fundamentalist 'secularism' as state ideology has not been quite successful in rooting out Islam from the culture and personality of the Turkish people.

Latest incarnation

In Turkish politics this is reflected in the steady gains of the Islamic party over the past three decades, despite persecution by the guardians of the state ideology, capped by the impressive victory in the recent parliamentary election of the Justice and Development Party (AKP), whom many observers feel as the latest incarnation of the Islamic party. This is despite AKP's charismatic leader, former Mayor of Istanbul, Recep Tayyip Erdogan having been barred from participating in the elections because of a previous conviction in 1998 for "inciting religious hatred" where he had recited an old poem that likened mosques to "barracks", "minarets" to "bayonets" and believers to "soldiers".

Against the backdrop of "war or terrorism" that increasingly seems to paint a picture of terrorism as being inherent in Islam and that Muslims are unfit to coexist with the rest of the modern world, the electoral victories of Islamist parties in Pakistan and Turkey must have baffled many western commentators.

If in Pakistan the alliance of Islamist parties include one that had close links with the Taliban, Afghanistan's former rulers, the Islamist tendency in Turkey has always worn the face of moderation. This is for the basic reasons that for them to be able to participate in Turkey's political process, they have to tread very gingerly within the narrow sanctions of the state ideology of Kemalist secularism, and secondly, like other political parties, Turkey's Islamists too desire political and economic integration into an enlarged European Union (EU). Thus, if the term "Islamist" connotes hard-line Islamic fundamentalism that is anti-west, it is a label that does not actually fit the Turkish trend.

Despite its leaders' assurances that it has renounced its Islamist agenda, many hold the view that the AKP is the latest incarnation of Turkey's political Islam which has reconstituted itself several times over the past three decades following vicious persecution and successive proscriptions by Turkey's guardians of secularism, the military and bureaucratic elite.

Rise and fall

Turkey's Islamists under the Milli Salamat Party had been able to form coalition governments in 1973 and 1977 with its leader and founder Necmettin Erbakan becoming deputy prime minister. The party was outlawed in 1980 and Erbakan was put under detention when Turkey came under direct military rule.

When party political activity was allowed to resume in 1983, the Islamic trend reconstituted itself as the Refah Party (Welfare). The Refah started to win the people's confidence by winning municipal elections and running local governments cleanly and efficiently, including the metropolitan councils of Istanbul and Ankara.

The Refah's biggest success was the December 1995 general elections where it was able to form a coalition government with Tansu Ciller's True Path Party, and Erbakan later became prime minister.

But he lasted only about a year. His Islamic tendency, soft by any standard, greatly disturbed the Turkish political establishment and the military, and he was removed through a virtual coup on Feb 28, 1997 and the Refah Party was banned.

The Islamists later regrouped under the Fazilet (Virtue) Party but this was again outlawed the state guardians in 2001. Both Erbakan and Erdogan were barred from participating in the elections, having been previously convicted for "inciting religious hatred" under the notorious article 312 of the Turkish Criminal Code, perceived by many as an instrument meant to thwart any attempt to challenge the military-bureaucratic establishment's conception of the secular state.

According to an opinion piece by Mohammad Noureddine, an expert on Turkish affairs in a western daily, Turkey's Islamists have not forgotten the catastrophe that befell their movement after the "measures of Feb 28" 1997, a vicious campaign that was calculated to uproot all Islamist manifestation.

Reeling from these setbacks, Erdogan and his followers understood how vicious the Turkish regime can be and decided to pursue a new strategy designed to fight the regime from within, depriving it of the legal and constitutional weapons it fought them with hitherto by eschewing its Islamist credentials and severing its links with his former political and spiritual mentor, Erbakan.

New course

Erdogan has been trying to chart a new course in politics that would avoid the problems and difficulties Erbakan has been facing since 1970. Erdogan's AKP has been at pains not to give the impression that it is an Islam-based party to avoid political and legal prosecution, and it wants to attract as much of the voting public as possible.

That was why the issue of women's veils did not even figure in their list of priorities, and they instead focused their discourse on social welfare for Turkey's needy, fighting rampant corruption, bolstering economic growth and speeding up democratic reforms needed to qualify for membership in the EU. The AKP leaders prefer to describe themselves as conservative centrists similar to Western Europe's Christian democrats.

The Islamists' consistently moderate stance in Turkey makes for interesting observation which other Islamic parties in the Muslim world may well draw a lesson or two from. Guided by Erbakan for three decades, they have staunchly refused to be provoked, preferring to work peacefully within severe constitutional constraints and often vicious legal persecution by the guardians of the secular state.

Even Erbakan, the old mentor whom in the end Erdogan and his associates were forced to dissociate from, is not the typical Muslim world Islamist. He was formerly professor of mechanical engineering at Istanbul Technical University, having previously been chief research and development engineer in an organisation in Germany. He later became a successful industrialist and chairperson of the Union of Chambers of Commerce before founding the inaugural Islamist party, Milli Nizam Party in 1970 (this was outlawed one year later and the following year he formed the Milli Salamat Party).

For the guardians of Turkey's state ideology, even Erbakan's Islamic moderation was still seen as a threat to Kemalist secularism. As prime minister in 1996-1997, he was as keen for Turkey's membership to the EU as any other Turkish politician, but he also initiated the formation of the D-8, an economic grouping of Muslim countries that was supposed to include Indonesia, Egypt, Malaysia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Iran and Nigeria, and spoke passionately for a just world order based on the principles of justice, cooperation, and the supremacy of human rights, law and democracy. His attempts to allow Muslims to practice the outward expressions of their faith like the wearing of headscarves for women were seen as contravening the state ideology of secularism and he had to be forcibly removed.

In the end, today's Turkish Islamists, many of whom are Erbakan's former disciples, were forced to drop all references to Islam and concentrate on the universal values inherent in the teachings of religion justice, good governance, human dignity and human rights and democracy.

Muslims and democracy

Apart from making these ideals work in modern Turkey and salvaging its collapsed economy, Turkey's important geostrategic position and its desire to be part of an enlarged EU represent unique challenges to the incoming 'veiled' Islamist government. This will also be a test for EU's sincerity on the question of Turkey's ascension. Will they admit Muslim Turkey into a post-Christian European club, supposing that Turkey in some near future were able to improve its human rights record, abolish torture and end its repression of the Kurdish minority?

There is one universal, major problem that any party with an Islamic tendency in the Muslim world is saddled with: Can the Islamists be trusted with democracy? Will they subvert democracy once they attain power through a democratic process, the paranoia-inducing notion one man, one vote, one time? Is Erdogan's AKP an Islamist Trojan Horse in the garb of western Christian democrats?

Reading Robert Fisk's syndicated column that appeared in The Sun recently (Turks vote the 'wrong' result), it is strange that someone with his credentials was unable to differentiate Turkey's Justice and Development Party from other fundamentalist parties of the Muslim world.

He seemed to be suspicious that Erdogan is a closet Islamic militant who has re-invented himself for the purposes of realpolitik, and his party's landslide victory was purely due to protest votes against corruption and economic collapse rather than based on the party's stated agenda to rehabilitate Turkey's ailing economy and bring about democratic reforms in line with the strict requirements for EU membership.

That today's 'secular' Erdogan banned alcohol in municipal restaurants during his previous incarnation as mayor of Istanbul seems to be enough reason for western observers like Mr Fisk not to trust Muslims with democracy, even if Turkey is 99 percent Muslim. Such a view is probably made in ignorance of the 30-year history of Islamist struggle and overlooked the reasons for their popularity today they had cut their teeth in their efficient and transparent running of a great number municipal councils under their control.

It is interesting to watch Turkey's political development in the coming months and years. Will the generals do another Algeria or a soft coup that removed Erbakan in 1997? So far it is reassuring that they have promised to respect the will of the people. But in the end, will the Turkish generals give the new government of former Islamists a chance to deliver?

The rest of the Muslim world will be watching keenly if fundamentalist, obscurantist 'secularism', the ossified state ideology designed to uproot Islam from Turkish history, society and culture, give way to the secularism that the rest of the world have come to understand justice and the rule of law, human rights and democracy, and tolerance for religious freedom and cultural pluralism.

Writer's note: I have relied on Impact International of the July 96, March 97 and August 2000 issues for the factual information in this piece.