First, democracy doesn’t just take place at the polls, especially when the choices on the ballot are as unappealing as they have been in Turkey. British democracy came of age in the 19th century partly as a result of protests in the streets, which not only led to the enfranchisement of the previously disenfranchised but also to the formation of the Labour Party, offering new options to voters. Large numbers of people pouring into the street in several Turkish cities, even in the face of heavy-handed police action, may be Turkish democracy’s coming-of-age moment.

Second, there is a real chance that these protests, and the political movements that they might spawn, will transcend the deep-rooted but stale political divisions of the last two decades, divisions captured pithily by Recep Tayyip Erdogan when he said in 1998: “In this country there is a segregation of Black Turks and White Turks. Your brother Tayyip belongs to the Black Turks.”

In Turkey, these terms have nothing to do with skin color. “White Turks” are the well-educated, wealthy secular elites who see themselves as the defenders of Ataturk’s legacy. They are often associated with government bureaucracy, the military and big businesses in major Turkish cities. “Black Turks” are those that the White Turks look down upon as poorly educated, lower class and trapped by their piety. Elites tend to view them as peasants or being unable to shake off their peasant heritage.

Although the Turkish military periodically used religion as a weapon in its struggle against the political left, particularly after the 1980 military coup, by the 1990s the most important challenge to the secular elite’s rule came from religious conservative parties, who unabashedly represented the Black Turks.

In 1997, the military toppled a government led by the A.K.P.’s predecessor, the Welfare Party, which was subsequently shut down by the constitutional court. It similarly threatened the A.K.P. in 2007, with the Constitutional Court again following at its coattails and threatening to ban the party because its religious outlook violated the Turkish Constitution.

Particularly troubling for the secular elite was the fact that the wife of the new president, Mr. Gul, wore a head scarf, something banned in public spaces by the Constitution.

Since 1997, these divisions have defined Turkish politics. The military failed and the A.K.P. withstood the challenge. Turkey has become more democratic in the sense that the previously disenfranchised have become empowered. But it has not taken many steps toward liberal democracy. On the contrary, Turkish society has become more polarized between supporters of secular orthodoxy and the A.K.P., which, under Mr. Erdogan’s leadership, has used its newly acquired power to exact revenge on the military, secular elites and its other critics with increasingly authoritarian certitude.