ANKARA, TURKEY - Turkey's Islamic-rooted government, which was elected last year with a huge majority, continues to bask in popular support -- and will probably fall within a month.

The strange state of affairs is not due to any internal revolt or opposition threat, but to a case before Turkey's Constitutional Court that seeks to ban the Justice and Development Party on charges of undermining secularism.

With the court stacked with members of the secular elite, many Turks expect to see their democratically elected government booted out.

The consequences could be grave for Turkey's bid to join the European Union and for stability in the NATO member of 70 million people that strategically straddles Europe and the Middle East.

Foreign investors could be unsettled, and political gridlock would halt crucial reforms. Perhaps most importantly, such a radical step would trigger questions in an already leery EU about whether Turkey is the mature democracy it portrays itself to be.

Turkey's top prosecutor, Abdurrahman Yalcinkaya, argues that the ruling party, known by its Turkish initials AKP, is systematically trying to impose Islam on Turkey -- a charge vehemently denied by the party, which is far from a proponent of Islamic fundamentalism.

The indictment cites the government's effort to lift a ban on Islamic head scarves in universities and other measures meant to expand the rights of devout Muslims in the educational system.

Supporters of a ban, which could not be appealed, say the secular values canonized after World War I by modern Turkey's founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, must be defended at all costs.

"Secularism is the backbone of the regime in Turkey, and it is out of question to allow a political party to pursue Islamic policies to chip away at it," said Ulku Azrak, a law professor at Istanbul's Maltepe University.

But some observers, including EU leaders weighing Turkey's membership bid, are beginning to consider the AKP as better for democracy than the secularists, whose intolerance of religious symbolism is seen as running counter to liberal values.