Notices of the demise of Iran’s Green Revolution are premature. Without question, the tyrannical triumvirate — Ayotallah Ali Khamenei, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the Revolutionary Guard — have dealt a crippling blow to the popular movement protesting their electoral coup of June 12.

Thousands of Iranians have been arrested and savagely tortured — from street protesters to election campaign organizers for Mir Hussein Moussavi, the likely victor in that contest. Many are now being forced to “confess” to having been agents of the United States or Britain.

We have seen this play before, not simply in Iran but in other tyrannies that suppressed mass movements for democratic change with massive violence and terror.

But Iran in 2009 is not China in 1989, Burma in 1990 or Belarus in 2006. The crisis in the Islamic Republic has exposed and widened massive cracks within the ruling elite. Such divisions are always a sign of an impending crackup of dictatorship.

Despite the rush to bury Iran’s reformist movement as another lost cause, Iran remains at a possible political tipping point. Democracies around the world have a duty — not simply to themselves, but to their strategic interests — to weigh in. They must not be deterred by threats to shun talks over Iran’s nuclear program.

President Obama has gotten it right by signaling America’s support for peaceful protest, human rights and the rule of law. More explicit language, not to mention action, would only play into the hands of the most cynical and vicious conservative elements in Iran. Moreover, with no diplomatic ties and all but no trade with Iran, there is little more the U.S. could do right now to pressure the regime.

But there are over 100 other democracies in the world. It is time that their voices were heard and their actions felt in Tehran.

Britain shares with the U.S. the handicap of a past history of negative interference in Iran. But Britain has diplomatic and economic ties to the regime, and breaking or suspending those will weaken Ayatollah Khamenei and his reactionary allies.

Moreover, Britain can have a unique kind of impact in Iran: For more than a century, Iranians have believed in the omnipotence of the “British hand” in the affairs of their country. Any indication that Britain is no longer willing to do business with the Islamic regime will hearten the Iranian people and undermine the regime’s aura of invincibility.

Germany, France and Italy are major trading partners with Iran. They have little history of colonial interference in Iranian affairs. Their decision to refuse to recognize the Ahmadinejad regime would have an immense effect. More compelling still would be a similar declaration from the entire Group of 8 at its impending summit.

The smaller and less powerful democracies can also have an impact. It would be preposterous for Iranian hardliners to attribute ulterior strategic motives to actions by the Scandinavian countries or the Netherlands, Ireland, Canada or Slovenia. If a coalition of such countries were to condemn the crackdown, call for a release of political prisoners and demand full respect for human rights — and back up these positions with a downgrading of diplomatic and trade ties — this would send a powerful message to both sides in Iran.

Many democracies around the world, including the above, have diplomatic ties with Iran. It is important that they maintain their embassies in Tehran. But they should now refuse to recognize the legitimacy of Ahmadinejad’s government.

The most powerful coalition of democracies in the world, the 27-member European Union, is now debating whether to withdraw their ambassadors from Tehran in protest over the detention of the British Embassy’s Iranian personnel.

The withdrawal of E.U. ambassadors would send a stunning message to the Iranian hardliners that coups and bloody suppression of peaceful protests carry a heavy price in international standing.

With the simple diplomatic act of denying legitimacy — something nearly all democratic forces in Iran are now asking of the world — the democracies of the world can give a needed boost to the forces of democratic change in Iran and earn the lasting gratitude of a movement that will eventually triumph.

Over the past decade, thousands of young people in the post-communist region applied nonviolent methods of resistance to protest against large-scale electoral fraud. In 2000, the social movement Otpor (Resistance) played a vital role in removing Slobodan Milosevic from power. Inspired by Otpor, a number of youth movements emerged in Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, and Ukraine. In my post-doctoral project at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, I examine why some youth movements were more successful than others in mobilizing the population against the repressive political regime. My research suggests that political learning of autocratic incumbents has contributed to the diminishing power of similar youth movements.

In the wake of the 1998 draconic laws on universities and the mass media, a group of students from the University of Belgrade formed the youth movement Otpor and chose the clenched fist as its symbol. In the course of two-year nonviolent struggle against Milosevic, Otpor spread across Serbia and attracted more than 70,000 supporters. The youth movement launched a campaign with the provocative title “He Is Finished” and shifted the blame for all the country’s problems on the incumbent president. In addition, Otpor collaborated with other civil society actors to stage a get-out-to-vote campaign “It’s Time!” aimed at bringing first-time voters to the polling stations. In the 2000 election, almost 86 percent of 18-29 year old Serbs cast their ballot; most of them voted against Milosevic.

Given state pressures on the mainstream media, the Serbian movement delivered its messages by occupying the public space. Movement participants plastered Otpor stickers, spray-painted graffiti, staged street performances, and organized street concerts. “It is amazing how people notice branding in their everyday life, but underestimate it in nonviolent struggle,” a former Otpor activist noted. Without doubt, Otpor succeeded in creating and popularizing a model of nonviolent resistance.

Notwithstanding slight modifications of Otpor’s model, Belarus’ Zubr (Bison) in 2001, Georgia’s Kmara (Enough) in 2003, Ukraine’s Pora (It’s Time) in 2004, and an assortment of Azerbaijani youth groups in 2005 largely took a similar course of action. The youth movements were formed around the time of a national election and called for free and fair elections. Emulating Otpor, youth activists planned a negative campaign targeted at the incumbent president and a positive campaign aimed at boosting youth voter turnout. Likewise, youth movements employed a similar toolkit of protest strategies, including stickers, graffiti, street performances, and rock concerts.

At the same time, autocratic incumbents in the post-Soviet region began to scrutinize Otpor’s model of nonviolent resistance to prevent the repeat of the Serbia scenario. In light of electoral revolutions in Serbia, Georgia, and Ukraine, the governments in Azerbaijan and Belarus deployed coercive measures against youth movements before they could develop into powerful agents of political change. In addition, the incumbent presidents have invested considerable resources into the creation of state-sponsored youth organizations. In 2005 and 2008, the Azerbaijani youth movement Ireli (Forward) called upon young voters to support President Ilham Aliyev. Similarly, the Komsomol-like Belarusian Republican Union of Youth has become a tool for youth co-optation under President Alyaksandr Lukashenka. Like in the Soviet times, membership in the state-sponsored youth organization is now a pre-requisite for university admission and career growth in Belarus.

President Bush's vision of a democratic Middle East was premised in part on the region's popular Islamist groups reconciling themselves to the give-and-take nature of democracy.

It might make sense then, that the Bush administration would do what it could to support a party that has made such a transformation in Turkey. But it's not.

Turkey's Justice and Development Party (AKP), which fashioned itself as the Muslim equivalent of Europe's Christian Democrats, has stood out by passing a series of unprecedented political reforms as the country's ruling party.

Yet the Turkish Constitutional Court - bastion of the hard-line secularist old guard - is now threatening to close down the AKP and ban its leading figures, including Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and President Abdullah Gul, from party politics for five years. And the Bush administration, in the face of this impending judicial coup, has chosen to remain indifferent. The consequences could reach beyond a setback to democracy in Turkey and affect the Middle East.

The Constitutional Court will rule as soon as next week on an indictment accusing the AKP of being a "focal point of antisecular activities."

Turkey's Constitution establishes secularism as an unalterable principle and allows the court to ban parties it deems antisecular. But disbanding a democratically-elected party on such dubious grounds as attempting to lift a controversial ban on wearing head scarves in universities - the crux of the case against the AKP - is not how mature democracies handle divisive issues. Judges should not decide parties' fates; voters should.

Indeed, voters have flocked to the AKP since its founding by break away reformists within the Islamic movement. The party was elected in 2002 on pledges to preserve secularism and vigorously pursue Turkey's efforts to join the European Union. It also explicitly disavowed the Islamist label.

The AKP-led government then passed a series of democratic reforms that led Brussels to begin formal accession negotiations with Turkey. Those reforms, together with a booming economy, spurred 47 percent of Turks to vote for the AKP in its landslide 2007 reelection.

To be sure, the AKP's democratic credentials are hardly perfect. It has been overly cautious in repealing certain restrictions on freedom of speech, and it abruptly lifted the head scarf ban without first initiating a national dialogue.

Yet despite its flaws, the AKP is the most democratically inclined - and somewhat ironically, the most pro-Western - political party on the Turkish scene today. Closing it down would be a mistake.

A ban on a party that nearly half of the country supports could spark violence - which Turkey's secularist generals might then use as a pretext for a direct military intervention. Regardless, senior EU figures have criticized the closure case and warned that banning the AKP could gravely damage Turkey's candidacy.

Even more troubling is the message it would send to the rest of the Muslim world - no matter how much Islamists moderate, they won't be accepted as legitimate participants in the democratic process.

In recent years, mainstream Islamist groups throughout the region - including in Egypt, Jordan, and Morocco - have embraced many of the foundational components of democratic life. Yet their moderation has been met with harsh government repression, or more subtle designs to restrict their political participation.

More is at stake than may initially appear. If the AKP - the most moderate, pro-democratic "Islamist" party in the region today - is disbanded, it will strengthen those Islamists who see violence and confrontation as a surer means to influence political power.

During the past year, a number of Islamist leaders we've spoken to in Egypt and Jordan have warned that rank-and-file activists are losing faith in the democratic process, and may soon become attracted to more radical approaches. A ban on the AKP would only make it that much harder for moderates to continue making the case that participating in elections is worthwhile.

Though US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice praises the AKP's democratization agenda, last month she said, "Obviously, we are not going to get involved in ... the current controversy in Turkey about the court case." Yet moments later she opined, "Sometimes when I'm asked what might democracy look like in the Middle East, I think it might look like Turkey." It's difficult to tell if she's referring to the new, democratizing Turkey of the past five years - or the reactionary Turkey where judges and generals flagrantly overrule the people's will.

President Bush has one last opportunity to reinvigorate the cause of Middle East democracy. By publicly denouncing the closure case, the administration would signal that the US not only supports Turkish democracy against a dangerous internal assault, but that it is also committed to defending all actors willing to abide by democratic principles in a region that desperately needs more of them.