Turkey's voters have thrown out a failed government and selected leaders who are in disfavor with the country's military and political establishment. This is the kind of opportunity people elsewhere in the Islamic world want and deserve. Turkey's election was noteworthy for passing power to the Justice and Development Party, which has been evolving from roots in Islamic sectarianism toward support for ties with Europe and the United States.

The next steps are crucial. Justice and Development must honor its pledges to protect the rights of the worldly as well as the devout. Its leader, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, declared that his party would guarantee Turkey's constitutionally mandated secularism, rightly noting that ''secularism is the protector of all beliefs and religions.''

Mr. Erdogan has been banned from Parliament and the new government for reciting a poem that, according to Turkey's courts, incited religious hatred. The ban should be lifted, not just because accountability will suffer but because poetry recitation is no bar to serving in elective office in any decent democracy. Now prosecutors are trying to outlaw the whole party. That offensive litigation should be immediately abandoned. The legal assault on Mr. Erdogan and his party, which has been made more threatening by the apparent backing of Turkey's military, must cease. There must be no repeat of the destructive meddling five years ago when the army forced an elected Islamic-oriented government from power.

Since then, Turkish democracy has been reinforced by reforms passed in the hope of smoothing admission to the European Union. Turkey will not be among the 10 new members likely to be added in 2004, but it should follow soon thereafter.