Claire Berlinski, who is one of the shrewdest observers of these matters, reports from Istanbul that the Islamists’ re-election is nothing to get hysterical over – or as Claire puts it:

Does this look like Iran to you?

No. There has been no revolution. Turkey is not Iran or Saudi Arabia or Talibanized Waziristan.

Nevertheless, the election represents an ongoing, remorseless, incremental change that will see Ataturk’s secular republic evolve into …something else. Quite what, we don’t yet know.

As I wrote in NR a few weeks back, in the 80-year history of modern Turkey, the population has increased from 14 million in 1923 to some 70 million today. The vast majority of that demographic surge comes from Anatolian Turkey – ie, eastern, Asian, traditional, Islamic Turkey, which never accepted Ataturk’s reforms and whose sons and daughters have spilled out of their rural hinterland and populated the cities. Rumelian Turkey – ie, western, European, secular, Kemalist Turkey – is in steep demographic decline. In every election, there will be fewer Kemalists.

Many of us English-speakers use the phrase “young Turks” without pondering the origin of the expression: The original “young Turks” were the youthful activists agitating for reform in the last decades of the Ottoman Empire. The phrase itself recognizes a connection between political energy and demography. As yesterday confirmed, today’s young Turks are Islamist. The Kemalists are old Turks.