After Sunday’s election Turkey is still as starkly divided as it has ever been about what kind of country it wants to be. Does it still want to stick fiercely to the secular vision of its founder, Kemal Atatürk, keeping religion out of the public square? Or should it express its Muslim heritage and identity, or even become an Islamic republic? Does it want to continue to move closer to Europe, or seek a new Asian destiny? Turkish voters did not give a clear, overwhelming answer to any of these questions.

The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Prime Minister, increased its vote from 34 to 47 per cent. But the result has not given the cautious Islamist party the free hand it wants to reform the resolutely secular constitution because it now faces a stronger opposition in the national assembly. The main secular party, the People’s Republican Party (CHP), increased its support. The National Action Party (MHP), a proto-fascist group, galvanised by fears that the AKP is intent on stealthily Islamicising Turkey, surged from nowhere to win 14 per cent of the vote.

The MHP, strongly opposed to joining the EU, aims to unite the Turkic people in a “Greater Turkey” that encompasses Xinjiang in China, Central Asia, the Caucasus and northwest Iran. Its more extremist theoreticians also include Hungary and Finland in their “family of Turkish nations”.

Though the country is divided, the AKP in the four years since it gained power has governed much more ably than most Turkish governments since the Second World War. The economy has grown on average each year by 7 per cent, foreign investment is at a record high and inflation, the bane of Turkish life for generations, is under control. Even the job market has improved to the point that, for the first time since the 1950s, Turkey has stopped exporting large numbers of workers to Europe and the Middle East.

Yet, a majority of Turks did not vote for AKP because of suspicions that it wants to keep the state’s secular appearance but slowly Islamicise society. Even some AKP supporters admit that they cannot be sure that the party does not have a hidden agenda. Such suspicions are inspired because most of the 17 groups that formed the AKP have histories of involvement with radical Islamist outfits dedicated to restoring the Caliphate or turning Turkey into an Islamic republic.

Mr Erdogan himself is an enigma. He gives the impression of a genuine democrat who believes that religion is a private matter. And yet he sent his daughters to university abroad because they were not allowed to wear the hijab at Turkish universities. His wife also wears the hijab. The hijab that the Erdogan womenfolk wear, however, is not the traditional Anatolian kapali (headscarf) that peasant women have always worn. Theirs is the type associated with political Islam since the 1970s.

Although there is little evidence of AKP involvement in conspiratorial politics, there is plenty of evidence that the party is engaged in a quiet purge of its opponents. Over the past four years many judges of secularist persuasion have been pushed into retirement, or demoted, and replaced by AKP sympathisers. There has also been a slow purge of schools, with an unknown number of teachers, branded as “not Islamic enough”. A similar changing of the guard is taking place within the armed forces, the traditional guardians of the secular republic. As for appointments to key posts in the public sector, the AKP has gone beyond the limits of normal grace-and-favour or nepotistic politics.

The AKP has also built a strong base among the new class of entrepreneurs who, thanks to Mr Erdogan’s rule, have made immense fortunes from government contracts and import-export quotas. These self-styled “Islamic tigers” in return have generously contributed to the party’s finances and advertised their devotion to Islam. People in Ankara wryly observe that while the International Monetary Fund sets the policies that produce prosperity in Turkey, it is the AKP that distributes its fruits.

Some privately owned TV stations licensed by the AKP have entered the market with programmes using thinly disguised religious messages and series that fan the fires of anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism. One such series, Valley of the Wolves, features Jewish doctors extracting organs from the bodies of Muslims for sale by unscrupulous American businessmen linked to the CIA.

More importantly, religious themes have crept into Turkish school curriculums, while the Government subsidises religious cultural activities through the Endowments Office and the businesses under its control.

AKP leaders dismiss concerns about such things as “political paranoia”. Nevertheless, to some Turks, all this looks like a creeping coup d’état by a party trying to control all the organs of state. The AKP has made no secret of its determination to appoint the next president of the Republic, removing a key check on its exercise of power. Given another four or five years, the AKP would also have a majority in the Supreme Court, while pro-AKP officers move up the ranks to dominate the armed forces.

Many Turks believe that the army, while allowing Sunday’s result to stand, will intervene to prevent the AKP from using its new majority to bend the State to its will. Since 1960 the Turkish army has staged a coup once every ten years, either to curb the radical Left or the Islamist Right. Though it is difficult to imagine tanks rumbling through the streets of Ankara, it would be rash to dismiss the possibility that the army might by more subtle means exert its authority to stop Islamicisation, real or imagined.

Sunday’s election was a victory for democracy in a Muslim-majority country in the Middle East. But will it also be a victory for good sense and moderation? Not even Turkey’s voters know that yet.

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