Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish Prime Minister, swaggered across the stage, eyed the crowd and paused to take in their cheers. “Are you going to vote for freedoms or for those who block them?” he declaimed, in a voice almost hoarse from days on the campaign trail. “Are you going to vote for those who want to integrate with the world, or those who want to turn inwards?”

The hundreds of thousands of his supporters massed into Kazlicesme Square, Istanbul, chanted to his words, screaming approval in every pause.

In a confident, unprompted, almost jovial performance, the Prime Minister and leader of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) wooed the crowd with a rundown of his Government’s economic performance and mocking quips about opposition promises.

The crowd was a cross-section of the city’s complicated social makeup – little blonde girls dancing on adults’ shoulders next to elderly women with headscarves, and young students jollied along by their bearded fathers. It was hard to believe that the Prime Minister is under siege from the most powerful sections of Turkish society.

When Turks go to the polls this weekend, they are likely to return Mr Erdogan as Prime Minister of one of the most reformist Governments modern Turkey has lived under. The former Islamist’s seemingly smooth reelection has become a high-stakes referendum over the basic values of the Turkish state.

The polls were called, earlier than scheduled, after a crisis over Mr Erdogan’s choice for President. The military, judiciary, opposition parties and millions of secularist protesters attacked his perceived Islamist agenda for nominating Abdullah Gul, the Foreign Minister, whose wife wears a Muslim-style headscarf. Secularists abhor the scarf as a sign of backwardness.

Beneath the veneer of a religious-secularist rift lies a tussle between the entrenched nationalist, militarist ethos of the 85-year-old secular Turkish Republic and the looser, proWest and pro-market but socially more flexible vision of a new guard trying to reshape the country.

“This is an extraordinary election. We could consider it a sort of referendum on the changes brought about by the EU membership process,” said Ali Bayramoglu, a liberal political commentator, referring to the sweeping social and political changes demanded by the European Union and begun by AKP, including reducing the strong influence of the powerful Turkish military in civilian life. The Turkish Republic, founded by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, a heroic soldier, has always embodied a respect for the military.

Ranged against AKP is a catalogue of secularist parties, almost all representing the status quo and embracing the rising tide of anti-EU, anti-markets nationalism. Mr Erdogan, who is accused of harbouring a secret agenda to turn Turkey into a restrictive religious society, is playing on his Government’s pro-EU, pro-market record in the face of an opposition that has criticised him for pushing reforms to the detriment of national interest.

Tellingly, as opposition parties become desperate to dent the 40 per cent support that AKP is said to enjoy, there is greater focus on its alleged soft approach to Kurdish terror, a pet nationalist charge. With nationalism the new trump card, all parties seem to have forgotten that only two months ago the secular state was about to collapse under the weight of Mrs Gul’s headscarf.

Some parties are even vaguely offering to “solve the headscarf situation”– that is, to remove barriers to headscarved women studying at university, working in public offices or entering parliament.

However, the headscarf remains so controversial a symbol that not even Mr Erdogan has dared to field a woman candidate who covers up.

In his 4½ years in office, he has unpicked decades of Turkish naysaying to seek a compromise on Cyprus, the stilldivided EU member, pushed through sweeping rights reforms, including lifting restrictions on Kurdish culture despite accusations of encouraging terror, and forged ahead successfully with an IMF programme of privatisation and painful economic reform – despite charges of selling off the nation’s soul.

Faith and secularism

–– Turkish secularism was instituted in 1923 by the reforms of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. He separated faith from political institutions when establishing the current Turkish republic

–– Its forerunner, the Virtue Party, was closed by the courts in 2001 for its “antisecular” activities

–– Turkey’s current ruling party, the AKP (Justice and Development Party), came to power in 2002 as a popular movement with a strong religious basis

–– Since 1960 the Turkish military has intervened four times to unseat governments in the country

–– 99.8% of Turkey’s population currently identify themselves as Muslim, most of those as Sunnis. The other 0.2% consists largely of Christians and Jews

–– As part of negotiations to join the European Union, the Turkish Government has announced a plan to adopt a wide range of EU laws by 2013

*Sources: William and Mary College, Virginia; Gallup; CIA World Factbook; Centre for European Reform; The Washington Institute

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