Next, the generals commanding Turkey’s 515,000-man armed forces – NATO’s second largest – staged a shocking act of insubordination and anti-democratic behaviour. They refused to attend the inauguration President Gul who comes from the moderate Islamist Justice and Welfare Party, better known by its acronym, AK.

If there was ever a moment for the US and NATO to show support for democracy it was at President Gul’s inauguration. Turkey’s new generals should have been told to go back to their barracks and polish their medals. But aside from a few peeps of tepid support for Turkey’s new president from mid-level western officials, the US and NATO remained silent.

The generals had good reason to be upset. An oligarchy made up of the military, its secularist’ allies, and a shadowy  deep government of intelligence agents and figures on the wrong side of the law has ruled Turkey for the last 84 years behind a façade of parliamentary government. This westernised minority includes officers, industrialists, judges, academics, media owners, bureaucrats, and an urban upper class. Secularists have held power since modern Turkey was created in the 1920’s as a corporate state by army commander and national hero, Mustafa Kemal, known as Ataturk.

Last month, Turkey’s AK Party, which has mildly Islamic roots, won a landslide victory in a free, fair vote. Secularists, who had been blocking Gul’s from the presidency, got only 20 per cent of the vote. Turkey’s elite has long unsuccessfully tried to impose western culture and values on Turkey’s conservative, deeply religious farmers and recent urban newcomers who make up 70 per cent of the population.

Claims by the secularists AK would impose Iranian -style Islamic government on Turkey were rejected by a majority of voters. What some leading secularists really feared was that AK would launch investigations of their sweetheart arms and business deals, and links to the deep government.’

AK’s victory likely means the end of the cult of Kemalism and Turkey’s role, to paraphrase Voltaire’s description of Prussia, as ‘an army disguised as a nation’. In many ways, Turkey remains stuck in the 1920’s or 30’s. The cult of Ataturk has become a state religion that often seems to want to replace Islam, a faith that Mustafa Kemal detested. It is high time for Turkey to forget the 1920’s and march into the 21st Century.

In recent years, AK, led by PM Recep Erdogan, proved itself Turkey’s most progressive, popular party since World War II. Under Erdogan, AK made important advances in human rights and justice, improved relations with the restive Kurdish minority, fought corruption, and stabilised Turkey’s chronically chaotic finances.

AK also did away with many repressive laws that limited free speech and criticism of the government. However, criticising the military, and insulting Turkishness’ still remain crimes. The government still controls the Muslim religious establishment and writes every Friday sermon given in the nation’s mosques.

Turkey’s AK has tried to combine core Islamic values of good government, justice and fighting corruption with the best western practices of governance, while avoiding imposing any religious dogmas. AK has also harmonised Turkey’s legal system with that of the world’s leader of human rights, the European Union.

The Islamist ‘lite’ AK has championed Turkey’s restructuring into a modern nation and promoted joining the EU while, ironically, the reactionary westernised secularist elite and military have mostly opposed it, fearing EU entry would threaten their long-protected political and economic privileges.

Washington keeps claiming it seeks to nurture genuine democracy in the Muslim World. Turkey’s AK Party is precisely the kind of moderate, sensible, capable government the US should be strongly supporting. Unfortunately, the terms Islamic’ and Islamist’ have been so demonised by Washington it cannot deal with even moderate Muslims, like AK, who in many ways resemble Europe’s Christian Democrats.

The United States should have sent its chiefs of staff to Turkey to offer a salute and congratulations to President Gul, and to put Turkey’s blustering dinosaur generals in their place.

Eric S. Margolis is a veteran American journalist and contributing foreign editor of The Toronto Sun.