EU nations divided over whether to slow Turkey membership talks

The Associated Press

BRUSSELS, Belgium: European Union nations were divided Wednesday over whether to partially freeze membership talks with predominantly Muslim Turkey over Ankara's refusal to open its ports to EU member Cyprus.

Diplomats and officials said they were braced for difficult meetings to find consensus between all 25 EU countries before a Dec. 14-15 EU leaders summit, which will decide the fate of Turkey's decades-old membership bid.

"We are in quite a problematic situation," said Sweden's Foreign Minister Carl Bildt. "Opinions are divided on the issue."

Divisions among EU leaders were laid bare after the European Commission recommended partially halting membership talks to protest of Ankara's refusal to extend an agreed-to customs union with Cyprus and nine other countries that joined the EU in 2004.

Prime Minister Tony Blair called it a "serious mistake" to send Turkey a negative message on membership now, and Spain's Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero urged leaders to "work intensively" to keep the EU's doors open to Ankara.

Bildt also criticized the recommendation for going too far and risked destabilizing the region if Europe choses to freeze its ties with Turkey, which many see as a strategic and stable partner in an otherwise volatile region.

"I see a risk they are putting the brakes on too hard," Bildt said. "There is a risk of collateral damage being fairly extensive ... we want to increase the stability in a very volatile part of the world, are these recommendations best geared toward those objectives, that's going to be the debate."

French President Jacques Chirac said France "was in line with Germany and other partners" that the EU "has no other choice" given Turkey's refusal to adopt a customs pact with the EU, which would open Turkish ports to Cyprus — a country that Ankara refuses to recognize.

Denmark's Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen said the EU had to "send a very clear signal" to Turkey that it must live up to its promises on Cyprus and on speeding up what he called the slow pace of reforms there.

"It is Turkey that must adapt to the EU," he said. "It's not the other way around."

Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan reacted with dismay at the recommendation.

"Such a decision is unacceptable," private NTV television quoted Erdogan as saying during a NATO summit in Latvia.

"We will not allow anyone to trample on our rights," Egemen Bagis, an aide to Erdogan, told NTV. He said Turkish leaders would still try to avert a partial suspension.

A decision by EU governments to slow entry talks would likely cause a rift in relations with Turkey over its bid to join the bloc and potentially damage the EU's image on the world stage. Negotiations started in October 2005.

"We confirm that these negotiations continue, although at a slower pace," EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn told reporters. "Failure to meet legal obligations cannot remain without consequences."

Rehn added, however, that Turkey still had time to resolve the standoff over Cyprus and avert a firm EU decision to partially freeze the negotiations.

He said a visit on Friday to Ankara by Finnish Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen, whose country holds the EU presidency, still offered a chance for Turkey to change its mind.

The recommendation, drafted by Rehn, called on EU governments not to open negotiations on issues that touch upon Turkey's relations with Cyprus. These include such issues as the free movement of goods, financial services, agriculture, fisheries, transport policy, customs union policy and external relations issues.

They would officially suspend 8 of 35 so-called policy chapters in the negotiations, which have already effectively been at a standstill since September, after Cyprus, Greece and France blocked further talks until the standoff is resolved.

Such a freeze would significantly slow Turkey's EU membership talks, which already were expected to last at least a decade, and which the EU said offered "no guarantee" of eventual membership.

Rehn also recommended that no chapter of the package could be finalized until Turkey moves to open its ports to Cyprus.

He said he expected his recommendation "will receive wide support," however initial reactions drew doubt on an easy first discussion on the measure by EU foreign ministers next week.

Cyprus, Greece and France have taken a hard line against Turkey in recent months over the standoff, demanding that talks be suspended. Britain, Sweden and Spain are urging that the EU ensure talks are not frozen, fearing a rupture in ties with predominantly Muslim Turkey.

Cyprus has been divided into north and south since Turkey invaded the island in 1974, anticipating an attempt by Greek speakers to forge a union with Greece. The breakaway Turkish Cypriot state in the north is recognized only by Ankara and has been under a crippling international embargo for years.

In 2004, shortly before the island joined the EU, Greek Cypriot voters rejected a U.N. proposal to unify the island while Turkish Cypriots endorsed it.

The continuation of Turkey's EU entry talks had hinged on its readiness to trade with the Greek-speaking part of Cyprus that joined the union in 2004. In exchange, the EU said it would lift an embargo on the northern part of the island.

Take Cyprus issue out of our talks on joining the EU, insists Turkey

By Martin Wolf

"We oppose the linkage between the negotiations and Cyprus," insisted Ali Babacan, Turkey's minister of the economy and chief neg-otiator with the European Union, in an interview with the Financial Times.

Mr Babacan said Cyprus was a separate issue from Turkey's accession. "Our proposal on the Cyprus issue is to put it to one side in the accession negotiations and deal with it by lifting sanctions on both sides simultaneously.

"But it is impossible for Turkey to open its ports to Cyprus unilaterally. The prime minister has committed himself publicly on this." Moreover, added the minister, "the whole of Turkey is behind the government's stance".

"In 2004," he stressed, "we tried very hard for a settlement of the Cyprus question. We worked out a detailed plan and then, unfortunately, the Greek Cypriots rejected it in a referendum at the instigation of [the Cypriot president] Mr Papadopoulos." Mr Babacan said the EU was not impartial on the issue because Cyprus had joined the Union shortly after the referendum.

"The EU initially decided to end the isolation of Turkish Cyprus, to balance the accession of Cyprus. But the EU has not carried through on its promise. It is unfair to ask Turkey to make a unilateral concession to take goods from Cyprus within the customs union when the EU is not open to northern Cyprus.

"Turkey is a big and relatively poor country and perceived by some to have a different culture. But this is wrong. Turkey shares Eur-ope's fundamental values of democracy and the rule of law."

Mr Babacan said Turkey's macroeconomic performance was also converging with the EU's.

"The ratio of public sector net debt to gross domestic product has fallen from over 90 per cent at its peak to a forecast of just under 50 per cent at the end of this year.

"Next year, Turkey should hit the Maastricht limit of 60 per cent of GDP for the ratio of gross debt to GDP. Turkey should easily hit all the Maastricht treaty criteria for debt, deficits and inflation within a couple of years."

Growth this year was likely to end up at about6 per cent and inflation was likely to be just under 10 per cent, despite the impact of higher energy prices, he said. Next year's inflation target would remain at 4 per cent. Employment growth was also buoyant.

Inward foreign direct investment is forecast at $15bn (€11.4bn, £7.7bn) this year. Inward FDI and long-term credit will cover the current account deficit of about 8 per cent of GDP.

Most Turks still believed EU accession was a good thing, insis-ted Mr Babacan. But they had been shaken by the German discussion of a privileged partnership and the proposed French law banning denial of the massacres of Armenians during the first world war, quite apart from the Cyprus issue.

"The political reaction in Turkey to such European statements and actions ex-p-lains the decline in support for accession," he said.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2006

Turkey's EU talks face partial suspension

By Daniel Dombey in Riga and Vincent Boland in Ankara

Turkey last night faced the near-certainty that its talks to join the European Union would be at least partially suspended, after the collapse of a diplomatic effort to forge a deal between Ankara and Cyprus.

The European Commission will now come under pressure to recommend next week that part of the negotiations be put on hold - a move it had been desperate to avoid for fear of jeopardising the process.

It will then be up to EU governments to decide what proportion of the talks should be suspended, amid fears that too great a punishment could cause Turkey to walk away.

Olli Rehn, EU enlargement commissioner, said yesterday the talks would not be stopped, but would be slowed down.

Britain and several of the EU's Nordic members favour suspending only a relatively small part of the talks - three out of 34 remaining negotiating "chapters". France would like more chapters to be suspended, but believes it is important that the negotiations not be stalled completely. Cyprus and Austria want a more emphatic response.

EU foreign ministers will seek to agree a common EU stance on December 11.

At the root of the dispute is Cyprus, which Ankara does not recognise diplomatically and whose vessels Turkey does not allow to use its ports.

Ankara says it will not change its stance whilethe ethnically Turkish north of the island remains isolated.

Yet Cyprus is an EU member and the EU last year demanded that Turkey permit Cypriot ships to use its ports during the course of 2006.

Yesterday, Finland, the current holder of theEU presidency, announced that the lack of response from the parties had ledit to abandon its attemptto broker a limited deal between Turkey and Cyprus.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2006

Awaiting pope, Turkey is unsure about ties to west

By Sabrina Tavernise / The New York Times

Published: November 27, 2006

ANKARA, Turkey: A short 24 hours before a visit by Pope Benedict XVI to this Muslim country, its prime minister finally agreed to meet him publicly. The venue: the airport, on the Turkish leader's way out of town.

The elaborate, last-minute choreography pointed to the deep divide that has festered within Turkish society since the foundation of the modern state. Should Turkey face eastward, toward its Muslim neighbors, or westward, toward Europe?

In the past five years, Muslims here have repeatedly felt betrayed by the West. The United States began holding Muslims without charges at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. It invaded Iraq and abused prisoners at Abu Ghraib. The European Union has cooled to them. The pope made a speech citing criticism of Islam.

Now, Turkey - a Muslim country with a rigidly secular state - is at a pivot point. It is trying to navigate a treacherous path between the forces that want to pull it closer toward Islam and the institutions that safeguard its secularism. Turkey's government, which is pro-Islamic, is constrained by rules dictating secularism established by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, Turkey's revered founder.

The extremes jostle on Istanbul's streets, where miniskirts mix with tightly tied headscarves and lingerie boutiques stand unapologetically next to mosques.

"There are two Turkeys within Turkey right now," said Binnaz Toprak, a professor of political science at Bosporus University.

The pope's visit, which begins Tuesday, falls squarely on that sensitive fault line and has brought into stark relief a slow but steady shift: Turkey is feeling its Muslim identity more and more. The trend worries secular Turkish politicians, who believe the state's central tenet is under threat. In late October, a senior officer of Turkey's army - which has ousted governments it has seen as overly Islamic - issued a rare warning to that effect.

Others say the threat is overstated, but acknowledge that Turks do feel pushed east by pressures on their country from America and Europe. A poll by the Pew Foundation in June found that 53 percent of Turks have positive views of Iran, while public opinion of Europe and the United States has slipped sharply.

"Many people in Turkey have lost hopes in joining Europe and they are looking for other horizons," said Onur Oymen, an opposition politician whose party is staunchly secular.

It has been more than 80 years since religion was ripped out of the heart of the new Turkish state, which was assembled from the remains of the Ottoman Empire, the political and economic heart of the Muslim world for centuries. But the portion of Turks who identify themselves by their religion, first and foremost as Muslims, has increased to 46 percent this year, from 36 percent seven years ago, according to a survey of 1,500 people in 23 cities conducted by the Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation, an independent research organization based in Istanbul. That is a trend that has emerged in countries throughout the Muslim world since Sept. 11, 2001.

"I'm here as a Muslim," said Fatma Eksioglu, who was sitting on the grass next to her sister in downtown Istanbul on Sunday at a demonstration of about 20,000 people opposing the pope's visit. She did not belong to the Islamic party that organized the gathering, she said, adding, "When it comes to Islam we are one."

But in a paradox that goes to the heart of the nuances of modern Turkey -- a stronger Muslim identity does not mean that, as in Iraq, fundamentalism is on the rise. or even that more Turks want more religion in their government. Indeed, the number of Turks in favor of imposing Sharia law declined to 9 percent from 21 percent, according to the survey, which was released last week.

Perhaps the most powerful factor pushing Turks toward the east has been a series of bitter setbacks in talks on admission to the European Union. To try to win membership, the Turkish government enacted a series of rigorous reforms to bring the country in line with European standards, including some unprecedented in the Muslim world, such as a law against marital rape.

But the admission talks have stalled. And while the official reason is a quibble involving the longstanding Greek-Turkish dispute over Cyprus, most Turks say they believe the real reason is a deep suspicion of their country's religion.

They see that in the opposition to Turkey's admission voiced by some European countries, including Germany, Austria and France. Indeed, in 2002, , former President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing of France said Turkey's admission to the European Union would mean "the end of Europe," and now the French presidential hopeful Nicholas Sarkozy has made his opposition a campaign issue. Even the pope, when he was still a cardinal in Germany, said publicly that he did not think Turkey fit into Europe because it was Muslim. That talk has begun to grate on Turks.

"It hurts me that the E.U. expects Turkey to be something it's not," said Nilgun Yun, a stylish 26-year-old chewing a chocolate muffin in a downtown Istanbul cafe on Sunday.

Her position, shared by many of her friends, was simple: "Accept me as I am. We are Muslim, and we will remain Muslim. That's not going to change."

Mr. Oyman, the Turkish opposition politician, said that talk about Turkey was tougher than ever. "You cannot believe how they accuse Turkey on Cyprus and other issues," he said in a telephone interview from Brussels, where he was attending a meeting of European parliamentarians. "Our European friends are playing a very shortsighted game."

The shift has begun affect trade. While Europe is still Turkey's largest trading partner, business with other neighbors, including Syria, Iraq and Iran, has picked up substantially in recent years, said Omer Bolat, the head of one of the country's largest business associations, whose members are mostly pro-Islamic. He put the growth at about 30 percent from just 3 percent in 2000.

"It is risky for a country with respect to foreign policy to have dependence on one partner and market," he said in English, sitting in a sleek conference room when overlooking a bustling trade fair showcasing Turkish goods. "Now Turkey is opening its muscles, its horizons."

The policies of the Bush administration have deeply worried Muslims, he said, before rushing off to speak to the Pakistani ambassador, who had arrived to the trade fair.

"The United States used to be paradigm of freedom and rights," he said. "But since the Republican period, the U.S. policies have been so detrimental in Muslim eyes."

Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, in just four years, has managed to get inflation down to historic lows and growth rates to all-time highs. The growing prosperity has eased integration of religious Turks into the country's self-consciously society, which is still suspicious of advocates of Islam, as well as of Mr. Erdogan and his pro-Islamic government.

"This group of people that was more religious has relaxed," Ms. Toprak said. "They are now visible. They go to restaurants they would never have gone; they go to posh shopping malls."

"It was a struggle to get a piece of the pie," she said. "Now they have one."

Even so, the increased religiosity, or at least identification with religion, could eventually present a serious problem for Turkey. There are already rumblings. A killing of a judge whose court had ruled on a headscarf case aroused suspicions among Turkey's securlarists. Gen. Yasar Buyukanit, head of the Turkish Army, has referred to a rising threat of fundamentalism on at least four occasions since he came to office in late August.

Mr. Erdogan's closely watched government has attempted to limit liquor consumption in public places, but later backed down. It also tried to make adultery a crime, but later relented.

Some Turkish officials play down the possibility of real damage to secularism, but say that European suspicion does Turkey no good.

The delay with Europe, for instance, "fans up the disappointment, the disillusionment," said Namik Tan, the spokesman for the Turkish Foreign Ministry. "People say, why are they doing this?"

That is why public officials, including Mr. Erdogan, have shrunk from the visit of the pope, who symbolizes, in the eyes of Turks, a disdain for Islam and the unfair exclusivity of the Western club. A cartoon in a Turkish newspaper last weekend showed two public officials belly-laughing at the bad luck of those Turkish officials obliged to meet him. (The senior official appointed to be his formal guide has the portfolio of youth and sport.) But the pope is coming, and the meetings are happening. Despite growing pains, a neglected Kurdish minority in the south, a thin skin for any reference to the Armenian genocide, and failure to scrap a law that makes insulting Turkishness a crime, Turkey stands out as lively democracy in a larger Middle East riddled with restrictions, and its acceptance by the West is a test case for everyone, officials said.

Muslim countries, Mr. Tan points out, are watching. "Turkey is a beacon for those countries," he said. "Don't forget, if we fail, then the whole dream will fail."

Sebnem Arsu contributed reported from Ankara, Turkey, and Ian Fisher from Rome. Sabrina Pacifici contributed research.

The pope and Islam: A chance to get friendlier

From Economist.com

IT HAS been called the most hazardous journey undertaken by a Roman pontiff in modern times. Some of the hazards of this week’s papal visit to Turkey may be unavoidable, others may have been of his own making. The trip by Pope Benedict XVI, which begins on Tuesday November 28th, was first conceived as an exercise in intra-Christian diplomacy: a visit to the Patriarch Bartholomew I, the most senior bishop of the worldwide Orthodox church, who resides in Istanbul.

It was largely at the insistence of the government in Ankara that the purpose of the journey was broadened into an opportunity for the pontiff to test and possibly re-examine his hitherto sceptical view of Turkey. But the omens in recent months have not been benign. The pope upset two large sections of Turkish society with a lecture on September 12th in which he quoted (without endorsing) a Byzantine emperor who suggested that Islam had engendered nothing but violence. Devout Muslims in Turkey (and around the world) were offended by the insult to their faith. Secular-nationalist Turks bristled at the mention of a Byzantine monarch. No wonder that some leading members of Turkey’s mildly Islamist government have seemed at pains to find excuses not to meet the pontiff, although the prime minister, Tayyip Erdogan, now says that he will do so.

Last-minute diplomatic moves appeared to be calming at least some of the tensions that were seething ahead of the visit. On Sunday the pope said he wanted his trip to show his “esteem and sincere friendship for Turkey”. A spokesman confirmed that Benedict would pay a visit to the Blue Mosque during his stay in Istanbul, a trip which the Vatican has presented as a “sign of respect” to Muslims. The Vatican's most senior official, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, took a slightly different tack when he spoke of the prospects for Turkey's membership of the European Union.

The Vatican's official position is one of neither supporting nor opposing Turkey's candidacy. But Cardinal Bertone said he hoped that Turkey would be able to fulfil the EU's conditions. There were also signs of a warmer approach on the other side. Turkey's foreign minister, Abdullah Gul, said at the weekend: “we hope that this visit will be a way of ending misunderstandings between Muslims and Christians”. But in a sign of public discontent, a demonstration in Istanbul on Sunday against the pontiff's trip attracted some 20,000 protesters.

The risks are clear. Mr Gul was quoted as saying the security precautions taken by the government were more elaborate than those for the last visit by George Bush. “We cannot forget what happened in St Peter's Square in 1981”, he said. “Unfortunately the person who shot Pope John Paul II was a Turk.”

In fact, the last pope's would-be assassin, Mehmet Ali Agca, is safely incarcerated in Kartal jail in Istanbul. But his claims, from his prison cell, that the pope's life is in danger are all too believable. Within the past week, members of the ultra-nationalist Grey Wolves have carried out a symbolic “occupation” of the Hagia Sophia museum in Istanbul (alleging that the pope might try to turn it back into a church) and it has been reported that police in Izmir have arrested several members of a group close to al-Qaeda.

Even before September, the Vatican had regarded the trip as a difficult mission. In the first place, Pope Benedict has made it clear he personally has doubts about Turkey's EU membership. A champion of the view that Europe is fundamentally Christian, the then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, told Le Figaro in 2004 that “Turkey has always represented a different continent, in permanent contrast to Europe”.

Despite the fact that Pope Benedict is hardly their country’s closest friend in the West, many Turkish liberals are deploring the fact that their political leaders have failed to seize the opportunity to turn the visit into a demonstration of openness, tolerance and European ideals.

While indicators suggest that Turks are growing more pious and more inclined to stress their Muslim identity, support for political Islam may be waning. Take the results of a new poll by Tesev, a think-tank which studies society and religion: the number of Turks who put their Muslim identity first has risen to 45% from 36% in 1999; but over the same period the number of people who favoured sharia law dropped from 21% to 9%. So if Pope Benedict learns anything from his trip it may be that pious Islam and political Islam are not the same thing.

The Coming Coup d'Etat?

Newsweek International

Dec. 4, 2006 issue - Turkey is a haunted land. too often in its history, the past has been prologue. It may be so again. Almost 10 years ago, the Turkish military ousted a popularly elected Islamist prime minister. The circumstances that produced that coup are re-emerging today. Once again, an Islamist is in power. Once again, the generals are muttering angrily about how his government is undermining the secular state—the foundation of modern Turkey. As I rate it, the chances of a military coup in Turkey occurring in 2007 are roughly 50-50.

I saw the last one coming, thanks to a conversation with a senior military officer not long before the events of February 1997. "I asked the Iranian generals after the 1979 revolution why they had done nothing to stop it. By the time they realized how far the Islamists had come, they replied, it was too late," he told me. "We will never let that happen in Turkey." Indeed, this very principle is enshrined in the bylaws of the Turkish General Staff, which declare that the military is "the sole protector" of Turkish secular democracy and of the "principles of Ataturk."

And so it is now. Though most Turks agree that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is more moderate than his ousted predecessor, Necmettin Erbakan, he is nonetheless an Islamist. The outgoing president Ahmet Necdet Sezer publicly warns that Erdogan's government is broadening its fundamentalist platform day by day, and challenging the basic principles of secularism as defined in the Turkish constitution. Pointedly, Sezer reminds the Turkish armed forces of their pledge to serve as its guardians.

The hawkish new chief of the General Staff, Gen. Yasar Buyukanit, echoes that theme. In a speech at the opening of the academic year at the Turkish War Academy on Oct. 2, he asked: "Are there not people in Turkey saying that secularism should be redefined? Aren't those people occupying the highest seats of the state? Isn't the ideology of Ataturk under attack?" Buyukanit went on to declare that an affirmative answer to any of these questions would confirm that Turkey is threatened with "Islamist fundamentalism."

In recent weeks I have spoken with Turkey's most senior officers. All made clear that, while they would not want to see an interruption in democracy, the military may soon have to step in to protect secularism, without which there cannot be democracy in a majority Muslim country. These are no-nonsense people who mean what they say.

Why is this happening? Chiefly because of the European Union. Never mind Cyprus, or the new human-rights laws Turkey has willingly passed under European pressure. The real problem is the EU's core demand: more civilian control over the military. That, senior officers say, would inevitably produce an Islamic Turkey. As they see it, the nation simply cannot afford to follow the EU on issues that would theoretically ensure, but in reality endanger, its future as a secular democracy—that is, a country in which state and mosque are separated and in which freedom of (as well as freedom from) religion is guaranteed for all.

The Turkish military is especially wary of how the EU is coping with its own Islamic problem. European governments are reaching out to Islamists, ostensibly in order to transform them into allies against domestic terrorism. That may work in the short-run, Turkish critics say. But a similar strategy would be intolerable to a majority of Turks, who fear that once the gates open to "moderate" Islamists, more radical forces will enter and take over.

With Turkey and the EU so sharply diverging, the danger is that the Turkish military, supported as in 1997 by other secularist groups, will no longer feel bound by the need to keep Turkey on its European path. And this time, unlike the past, the United States is in no position to restrain them. That's partly because of Iraq, and Turkey's unhappiness with what it sees as Washington's kid-glove treatment of Kurdish terrorists operating out of northern Kurdistan, and partly because of its embrace of Erdogan, most literally when he met George W. Bush the same day that Buyukanit made his remarks in Turkey. The United States opposed the 1997 coup, and it will do so again. But as one senior Turkish official recently put it: "If there were a coup, what would the U.S. do—enact sanctions against Turkey?"

To be sure, the military may exert its influence without resorting to force. And if a coup were to happen, it would not necessarily translate to a nondemocratic Turkey. More likely, it would simply mean the end of Turkey's current "Islamist experiment" and a return to a more conservative government—stalwartly secular, yes, but a democracy nonetheless. Ironically, this Turkey might ultimately be seen to be a better member of Europe than today's.

Baran is a Senior Fellow at Hudson Institute.

© 2006 Newsweek, Inc.

Spotlight: Pope Benedict XVI – Turkey trip will test faiths

By Tony Barber in Rome

Published: November 24 2006 17:31 | Last updated: November 24 2006 17:31

Few would seriously compare it to Daniel’s experience in the lions’ den, but the visit to Turkey on which Pope Benedict XVI embarks tomorrow is undoubtedly the most sensitive foreign trip of his 21-month reign.

The Pope’s four-day visit was originally intended to cement relations between the Roman Catholic Church and the world’s Orthodox Christians, whose spiritual leader, Bartholomew I, will have a private meeting with Benedict on Wednesday.

However, another dimension to the visit was added in September after the Pope enraged Muslims across the world by quoting a medieval Byzantine emperor in a manner that linked the Prophet Mohammed with violence.

Even in Turkey, a secular, democratic republic, many Muslims denounced the pontiff. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s prime minister, who is a devout Muslim, told Italian television last Thursday: “We have never allowed ourselves to insult the prophets of other religions. Our faith obliges us to show respect. Therefore, it is our right to expect the same treatment from members of other religions.”

Neither Mr Erdogan nor his foreign minister nor his religious affairs minister will meet the Pope in Turkey, the official explanation being that they all have important foreign engagements this week.

After the storm over his September speech, Benedict did not offer an explicit apology to Muslims but rather said he was sorry for the reactions to his remarks.

This response drew attention to what many liberal Catholics, as well as people of other faiths and non-religious commentators, regard as a certain narrow-minded, not to say dogmatic, aspect of the 79-year-old Pope’s character.

Yet Giancarlo Zizola, one of Italy’s most experienced Vatican-watchers, says this view of Benedict is a caricature and obscures his efforts to reshape the papacy into a more modest mould after the 27-year reign of John Paul II, his predecessor.

John Paul was one of the most towering personalities in the 2,000-year history of Christianity but he also disoriented millions of Catholics by leaving a legacy of profound divisions and unresolved ethical controversies in the Church.

The white-haired Benedict, who was born Joseph Alois Ratzinger in April 1920 in the German state of Bavaria, has quietly sought over the past 21 months to remove the media-driven “superstar” features of John Paul’s papacy and make the institution appear more humble in the eyes of the faithful.

In a speech to cardinals in the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel soon after his election as Pope, Benedict, referring to himself in the third person, said: “In undertaking his ministry, the new Pope knows that his task is to make the light of Christ shine in front of men and women – not his own light, but that of Christ.”

It was the first signal from Benedict that he intended to distance himself from John Paul in terms of style, if not doctrine.

Yet even Benedict’s ethical teachings may prove to be less conservative than many imagine, if a current debate over the Church’s attitude to condoms is anything to go by. The Vatican vigorously disapproves of condom use, but Mr Zizola says the rapid spread of Aids around the world, especially in Africa, an increasingly important region for Roman Catholicism, is forcing a rethink.

Now many senior prelates are advocating “a less restrictive interpretation of moral law” that would permit condom use to prevent “greater evils”, specifically the infection of a person with Aids through sex, Mr Zizola says.

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican’s doctrinal watchdog that Benedict led for 24 years from 1981 to 2005, is currently reviewing the issue. Ultimately, the Pope will decide whether to modify the Church’s position.

Like John Paul, Benedict has spent much of his reign fretting over rampant materialism, moral relativism and the decline of organised religion in the western world, especially Europe.

But Turks are more likely to remember Benedict’s comment in 2004 that the European Union should not admit Turkey as a member because Turkey had always been “in permanent contrast to Europe”.

With Turkey’s EU membership negotiations hanging by a thread, and with persistent tensions over Islam’s presence in Europe, this week’s visit will require all the diplomatic tact of which Benedict is capable.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2006

Religious sightseeing with Pope Benedict XVI in Turkey

Pope Benedict XVI's trip to Turkey is heavy with controversy and political meaning, but it is above all a religious pilgrimage. Here are some of the places that Benedict will visit in the Muslim country, along with their religious significance:
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EPHESUS, Wednesday, Nov. 29

Ephesus, an ancient metropolis near Turkey's Aegean coast, became an important center of Christianity in the early years after Jesus' death. St. John the Apostle and St. Paul the Apostle both lived here, and the Virgin Mary is thought to have spent her last years in a house nearby.

Ephesus was one of the seven churches mentioned in the "Book of Revelations." All seven churches, or communities, were in modern-day Turkey.

Paul's "Epistle to the Ephesians," thought to have been written while he was imprisoned in Rome, expresses his love for the church and urges the residents of Ephesus to find salvation through Christ's teachings.

Ephesus is perhaps best known for its ancient pagan ruins and for once being home to the Temple of Artemis, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Almost nothing remains of the temple.
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HOUSE OF THE VIRGIN MARY, Wednesday, Nov. 29

Nestled in the woods between Ephesus and the town of Selcuk is a structure that many believe was the last home of the Virgin Mary. A biblical passage (John 19:26-27) says Mary lived in the area, as did John the Apostle, who took her into his family after Jesus' death.

Benedict is scheduled to visit the site and give a small mass and homily on Nov. 29, his only open-air event of the trip. He will be the third pope in modern times to make a pilgrimage here — Paul VI came in 1967, and John Paul II came in 1979.

This site is also considered holy by Muslims, who revere Mary as the mother of a great prophet.
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ISTANBUL, Wednesday, Nov. 29-Friday, Dec. 1

Today one of the world's largest Muslim metropolises, Istanbul was once the center of the Christian world. Benedict still refers to the city as "Constantinople," its name before it was conquered by Ottoman Turks in 1453.

Benedict will visit the following sites in the city:
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CHURCH OF ST. GEORGE

The home church of Bartholomew I, leader of the world's 300 million Orthodox Christians.

The two major branches of Christianity represented by Bartholomew and Benedict split in 1054 over differences in opinion on the power of the papacy. The primary goal of Benedict's trip to Turkey is to meet with Bartholomew in an attempt to breach the divide and reunite the churches.
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HAGHIA SOPHIA

The Haghia Sophia was the world's largest church for more than 1,000 years until the completion of St. Peter's in the Vatican. The church's present incarnation was built by the Emperor Justinian in the 6th century. Commonly referred to as one of the world's most beautiful buildings, it was converted to a mosque in 1453.

Turkey's secularist founder, Ataturk, converted the Haghia Sophia into a museum in 1935. Religious services are prohibited, so Benedict will visit as a tourist and perform a service in a smaller cathedral later.
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ST. ESPRIT CATHEDRAL

Benedict follows in the footsteps of his predecessors Paul VI and John Paul II by delivering a mass at this cathedral, scheduled for the morning of Dec. 1. The cathedral was built in 1846 and is the main building of the Roman Catholic Church in Istanbul, though not the largest Catholic church in the city.

Turkey will not respond to EU deadline

By Dan Bilefsky / International Herald Tribune

BRUSSELS: Turkey said Tuesday that it would not respond to a European Union deadline demanding that it open its ports to Cyprus, raising the stakes in a showdown that could derail Ankara's EU membership talks.

"Issues like Cyprus cannot be solved by blackmail or setting deadlines," Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul said in Ankara after meeting with the chief EU negotiator for Turkey, Ali Babacan, and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The warning came just a day after the Finnish prime minister, Matti Vanhanen, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency, called on Turkey to open its ports to EU member Cyprus by early December. He said that time was running out for Turkey and that its membership bid faced "an uncertain future" if the Cyprus issue remained unsolved.

But Turkish officials say they will not compromise on Cyprus unless the EU lifts an international embargo against the northern Turkish-speaking part of the divided island, which Turkey alone recognizes.

The EU enlargement commissioner, Olli Rehn, on Tuesday told the European Parliament's foreign affairs committee in Brussels, according to Bloomberg News: "We need less talk about blackmail and red lines. It is, I find, rather outdated talk."

In an effort to overcome the impasse, Finland has proposed that the northern Cypriot port of Famagusta be placed under EU management and be opened to trade with the EU. The United Nations would take over control of the neighboring town of Varosha, which the Greek Cypriots claim as their own. But so far, Turkey has rejected the proposal.

EU officials said that Turkish intransigence made it increasingly likely that the EU would be forced to partly suspend the negotiations with Turkey, when leaders hold a two-day summit meeting Dec. 14. That would be unprecedented in the history of the 25- member bloc. "We seem to have reached a dead end," said a senior Finnish official, requesting anonymity because the talks are continuing.

The European Commission, the EU's executive branch, will issue a recommendation in the matter Dec. 6. In the absence of a diplomatic breakthrough, EU officials say the Commission is quite likely to recommend suspending talks on up to six of the more than 30 remaining chapters Turkey must negotiate before it can join the Union.

Gul, who will go to Helsinki on Sunday for talks on the Cyprus impasse, said he was still hopeful that diplomacy could work. "The Finnish are spending great efforts to resolve the issue and we are supporting them," Gul said. "If a solution can be find, we would gladly say 'yes.'"

Attitudes toward Turkey are hardening in the EU, where public opinion remains deeply skeptical of admitting a large, Muslim country of 71 million that many do not consider to be a part of Europe.

At a meeting of foreign ministers in Brussels last week, the French minister for European affairs, Catherine Colonna, said the EU would be forced to consider partly suspending its talks with Turkey if Ankara refused to compromise. Austria and Cyprus were blunter, calling for a halt in the negotiations if Turkey refused.

But France and Britain are reluctant to stop the talks altogether because of concerns that such a move would prompt a backlash in Turkey that could make it difficult to revive the negotiations.

Even a partial derailing of the talks could have far-reaching consequences in Turkey, where skepticism of the EU is increasing. Analysts warn that a rebuff would strengthen the hand of Islamists and nationalists, a growing number of whom are arguing against Turkish economic and political reforms that would be required for membership in the Union.

Turkish officials say the EU is applying a double standard and that it is not well placed to mediate over Cyprus since the Greek-speaking part of the divided island is already a member of the Union. They note with frustration that a United Nations plan to reunify the island failed in 2004 after it was rejected by the Greek Cypriot population and government, but was backed by the Turkish Cypriots.

"There are issues which the EU can no longer be objective or fair about," Babacan, the Turkish EU negotiator, said during a recent debate in Brussels over Turkey's EU ambitions.

A recent European Commission report assessing Turkey's membership progress rebuked the country for its failure to meet minimum standards on human rights and cited concerns over the rights of women.

It also highlighted "serious economic and social problems" facing the minority Kurdish population in the southeast of the country and chastised Turkey for its resistance to amending Article 301 of its penal code, which makes "insulting Turkishness" a crime and has been used to press charges against writers, including the 2006 Nobel literature laureate, Orhan Pamuk.

EU Sets Deadline for Turkey to Open Up Its Ports

The EU believes that a solution to the Turkish-Cypriot dispute that threatens to derail membership talks for Turkey to join the 25-member bloc is still possible with help from the United Nations.

The European Union on Monday gave Ankara until early December to normalize relations with Cyprus, before EU foreign ministers meet in Brussels, on Dec. 11, to decide on Turkey's prospects for joining the 25-nation bloc.

If Turkey continues to refuse to meet the EU's demands to open its ports and airports to Cypriot traffic, the country's prospects for membership would face an "uncertain future," said Finnish Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen, whose country currently holds the rotating EU presidency.

"Time is running out. If there is no agreement and Turkey does not honor its commitments, the EU will need to consider the implications for the accession process," Vanhanen added. "This is not a good scenario."

Looking for compromise

The Finnish leader said he expected the European Commission to table a recommendation on Turkey's progress on the Cyprus issue in the first week of December. An EU decision on whether to suspend or continue membership negotiations would then be pushed to Dec.11, he said.

Finland is struggling to hammer out a compromise deal under which the Turkish Cypriot port of Famagusta would be opened for trade with the EU in return for a move by Ankara to allow Greek Cypriot ships into its harbors. The internationally recognized Republic of Cyprus is controlled by the Greek Cypriot government in the south, with the northern third of the divided island recognized only by Turkey.

In spite of a customs deal that Turkey has signed with all 25 member countries, Ankara does not have diplomatic relations with Cyprus, which joined the EU in 2004. Ankara has long argued that it will only comply with EU demands once the bloc ends its current economic boycott of the Turkish portion of Cyprus.

Trying to avert a crisis

The Finnish premier said he was trying hard to avert a crisis in the accession talks before Germany assumes the six-month EU presidency.

"The presidency still believes that a solution is possible," said Vanhanen, adding that it was still up to the United Nations to try to reach a comprehensive settlement on the Cyprus issue.

Turkish Cypriot leader Mehmet Ali Talat, who met with United Nations chief Kofi Annan in Geneva on Monday, said the outgoing secretary general's proposals remained the best hope for resolving the Turkish-Cypriot impasse and securing unification of the island.

Annan's plan, which was approved by Turkish Cypriots in a 2004 referendum but rejected by the Greek side, "continues to be the basis of any solution in the future," Talat told reporters.

UN help needed

Talat added that he did not see the European Union as capable of reaching a solution, saying it could not act as an "impartial and honest broker" since both Greece and the Greek Cypriot government were EU members.

"Unfortunately, the Finnish plan is giving everything to the Greek Cypriots," he said.

Talat conceded that he had received no guarantee from Annan that the new secretary general, Ban Ki-Moon, who takes over in January, would stick to the plan.

Even if the Turkey-Cyprus crisis is resolved, accession talks for the huge, secular country, which is predominantly Muslim, are expected to take at least a decade.

DW staff/dpa/AFP (df)

Report: Orthodox leader warns against "unpleasant incidents" during papal trip

ANKARA, Turkey: The spiritual leader of the world's Orthodox Christians cautioned Turks in an interview published Sunday against creating potential "unpleasant incidents" during Pope Benedict XVI's upcoming trip to Turkey.

Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I said in an interview in the Sabah newspaper that the pope's Nov. 28-Dec. 1 trip was a great opportunity for Turkey, and he would tell the pontiff that the country belonged in the European Union, which Ankara has long sought to join.

The pope's visit to Turkey was born out of Benedict's desire to meet Bartholomew, who has his headquarters in Istanbul, once ancient Constantinople. The pontiff has been trying to foster better relations between the Orthodox and Catholics, and will meet privately with Bartholomew on Nov. 29.

Turkish authorities have said they expect protests against the pope, who angered Muslims by a speech he made in September in which he quoted a Byzantine emperor's remarks about Islam and violence.

On Sunday, more a dozen nationalists unfurled anti-pope banners during a conservative nationalist party rally in Istanbul.

"We don't want the pope in Turkey," read one banner; another depicted Bartholomew — a divisive figure in Turkey — and Benedict as the heads of a twin-headed snake.

Benedict has expressed regret that his remarks on Muslims had caused offense, and has stressed they did not reflect his personal opinion. He has also expressed esteem for Islam.

Bartholomew cautioned that if protests turn violent, they could cause problems for Turkey ahead of a critical EU summit in mid-December, where the EU leaders will judge Ankara's progress for membership.

"The pope has a say in all Catholic countries," Bartholomew told Sabah. "If there are psychologically unpleasant incidents, then this would be an issue in Brussels in December. Even if not at the official level, they would talk about it between themselves."

Bartholomew, however, said he would tell the pontiff that "it is not wrong for Turkey to become a member of the EU as a Muslim country because it would bring mutual richness."

"The EU should not remain as a Christian club," daily Sabah quoted Bartholomew as saying.

Bartholomew, a Turkish citizen, said the pope's trip was a great opportunity for Turkey.

"If it used badly, it would be harmful for Turkey's image," Bartholomew said. "While aspiring to be a member of the EU, we should avoid such an image."

Bartholomew, meanwhile, insisted that Turkey should reopen a Greek Orthodox theology school shut down 35 years ago.

Turkey has been resisting pressure from the EU to reopen the Halki Theological School on Heybeliada Island near Istanbul, which was closed to new students in 1971 under a law that put religious and military training under state control.

"As Turkish citizens, we pay tax, we serve in the military, we vote and we want the same rights. But it does not happen," Bartholomew said. "If Muslims want to study theology, there are 24 theology faculties. Where are we going to study?"

The seminary trained generations of Greek Orthodox leaders, including Bartholomew. Turkey does not recognize his international role and rejects his use of the title "ecumenical," or universal. It argues instead that the patriarch is merely the spiritual leader of Istanbul's dwindling Orthodox community.

"We've have this title since the 6th century. The word of ecumenical has no political content. This title is the only thing that I insist on, I will never renounce this title," Bartholomew said.

The Orthodox school issue is likely to attract attention during the papal trip.

The patriarchate in Istanbul dates from the 1,100-year-old Orthodox Greek Byzantine Empire, which collapsed when Muslim Ottoman Turks conquered Constantinople, today's Istanbul, in 1453.

Benedict will also meet with Turkey's president and the deputy premier, as well as the head of the country's religious affairs, a top Islamic cleric.

Turquía suspende la colaboración militar con Francia

París quita hierro a la represalia de Ankara por la aprobación de la ley sobre el genocidio armenio

Dos países aliados en el seno de la OTAN, Francia y Turquía, enfriaron ayer sus relaciones al decidir Ankara que suspende su cooperación militar con París. La medida responde a una ley aprobada en octubre por la Asamblea Nacional francesa que penaliza la negación del genocidio armenio por los otomanos entre 1915 y 1917. El Gobierno de Ankara ya advirtió cuando se votó la ley que Francia se exponía a la hostilidad de Turquía.

"Las relaciones con Francia en el ámbito militar han sido suspendidas", afirmó ayer el general Ilker Basbug, jefe de Estado Mayor del Ejército de Tierra turco en un escueto comunicado. Basbug no precisó si esta suspensión suponía apartar a las empresas francesas del mercado militar turco.

Francia es el tercer proveedor de armas en el mundo, pero la mayoría de sus empresas están integradas en consorcios europeos. La principal amenaza de la decisión turca recae sobre el grupo EADS, con capital francés, alemán y español. EADS, que fabrica los helicópteros Eurocopter, se ha presentado al concurso para la adjudicación de un contrato de 52 helicópteros militares, que asciende a varios cientos de millones de euros.

Ankara parecía inclinarse hasta ahora por aparatos de fabricación estadounidense, pero el enfriamiento de las relaciones con París parece ofrecer la ocasión de presentar el rechazo turco como una respuesta a una provocación francesa por la ley sobre el genocidio armenio. Turquía, país candidato a ingresar en la UE, se ahorra también la necesidad de justificar su preferencia por los aparatos norteamericanos en lugar de los europeos.

En los 10 últimos años, Turquía ha comprado armas a Francia por un monto de 898 millones de euros. Para Patrice Bouveret, investigador del Observatorio de Ventas de Armas, las exportaciones francesas hacia Turquía "no son fundamentales". Representan el 3% del total, y Turquía sólo es el 13º cliente de Francia. Bouveret recuerda también que los contratos ya firmados serán respetados.

El Gobierno francés intentó quitar hierro a la decisión turca. El portavoz del Ministerio de Exteriores, Jean Baptiste Mattéi, recordó que fuerzas de ambos países colaboran desde hace tiempo en Afganistán, Líbano, Bosnia, Kosovo y República Democrática de Congo. "Existe una cooperación estrecha y un gran respeto mutuo entre las Fuerzas Armadas de ambos países", dijo Mattéi, quien subrayó que en Afganistán ambos contingentes comparten base en Kabul.

Por su parte, el portavoz de Defensa, Jean-François Bureau, rechazó que la declaración del jefe militar turco refleje "una crisis o una gran dificultad".

Asimismo, la OTAN aseguró que la tensión entre dos de sus miembros no tendrá consecuencias en la Alianza. "Entendemos que la decisión turca no va a afectar la OTAN. Se trata de las relaciones bilaterales, no de opera-ciones de la OTAN", dijo el portavoz de la Alianza, James Appathurai.

Con todo, la congelación de la cooperación militar entre ambos países es el último de una serie de desencuentros recíprocos. En 2001, cuando el Parlamento francés -Francia tiene una minoría de origen armenio cifrada en más de medio millón de personas- votó una resolución para reconocer el genocidio armenio, las empresas francesas fueron apartadas de los concursos de adjudicación. La nueva ley, votada por la Cámara baja pero aún no aprobada por el Senado francés, prevé condenar con hasta un año de cárcel y 45.000 euros de multa la negación de la matanza de armenios, que según la mayoría de los historiadores causó en torno a 1,5 millones de víctimas. Turquía niega tales matanzas, y afirma que hubo víctimas en ambos bandos. El propio presidente francés, Jacques Chirac, precisó que estaba en contra del texto legal, pero muchos turcos consideran que el proyecto es una nueva prueba del rechazo en Francia a la entrada de Turquía en la UE.

M. DE TAILLAC / AGENCIAS - Madrid / Ankara

Armenians in Turkey; Not dead yet

Nov 16th 2006
From The Economist print edition

Turkey's Armenian population is growing

IN THE grimy alleys of Istanbul's Kumkapi district the air is thick with a rarely heard language: Armenian. Marina Martossian, who has been working illegally for five months as a cleaner, is typical of 40,000 compatriots there. She is delighted with her $300 monthly pay and calls her Turkish bosses “the kindest people in the world”.

That's a big change. Bitter debate over the fate of the Ottoman Armenians—did the mass killings of 1915 constitute genocide?—has fuelled decades of enmity. A survey by TESEV, a think-tank in Istanbul, showed some 70% of Armenians had a negative view of the Turks: a tenth called them “enemies”; a similar chunk “barbarians”. Among Turks, 34% thought poorly of Armenians (17%, bizarrely, believed the Armenians were Jews).

Turkey's Armenian minority dwindled to 80,000. In 1993 Turkey sealed the border with Armenia, after it seized the province of Nagorno-Karabakh from the Turks' Azeri cousins. The issue poisons other ties too: this week Turkey broke off military relations with France, after parliament there voted to criminalise denial of the genocide.

Now Turkish officials go easy on the Armenians—in contrast to other illegal workers. They also welcome changing attitudes among diaspora Armenians, especially among those who actually visit Turkey. In an e-mail widely circulated among émigrés this month, Kardash Onnig, an Armenian-American artist, who recently returned from an arts festival in the eastern province of Kars, says he “never imagined that an Armenian artist singing Armenian songs could elicit a response of such brotherly humanity. I was in a sea of Turks dancing to Armenian tunes. What joy! My eyes were full of tears.”

Turkey suspends military ties with France over Armenian genocide bill

ANKARA, Turkey: Turkey has suspended military relations with France in a dispute over whether the mass killings of Armenians in the last century amounted to genocide, the land forces commander said.

The move raises tensions with a key member of the European Union at a time when Turkey's negotiations to become a member of the 25-nation bloc look increasingly troubled, with neither side willing to give way on a dispute over divided Cyprus.

Gen. Ilker Basbug told reporters on Wednesday that military ties with France were suspended after lawmakers in France's lower house of parliament approved a bill in October that would make it a crime to deny that Turks committed genocide against Armenians. The bill would have to be approved by the French Senate and president to become law.

"Relations with France in the military field have been suspended," the state-owned Anatolia news agency quoted Basbug as saying. Asked whether there were any cancellations of military visits, Basbug said, "There are no high-level visits between the two countries."

Lale Sariibrahimoglu, an expert on military issues, said the cancellation of visits would not have a substantial effect on military contracts.

"In the past few years, France had not had very high chance of winning Turkish military contracts anyway, for example in helicopter and satellite procurement projects," she said. For example, the Eurocopter Group's Tiger helicopter was eliminated from the running to supply attack helicopters to Turkey, she said.

A Turkish, army-owned conglomerate, Oyak, has several partnerships with French companies, including Renault, and these investments were not likely to be affected, Sariibrahimoglu said.

France's Foreign Ministry and Defense Ministry had no immediate comment.

Turkey vehemently denies that it committed genocide against Armenians, though many nations have classified the World War I-era killings as such and say some 1.5 million Armenians were killed.

Turkey acknowledges that large numbers of Armenians died in mass expulsions and fighting, but says the number of dead is exaggerated and that most were killed in interethnic battles as the Ottoman Empire collapsed.

The Turkish general spoke at a reception in honor of the founding of the breakaway republic in Turkish northern Cyprus.

In 1974, Turkish forces invaded the island to stop a coup by army officers that aimed to unite Cyprus with Greece. Since then, Turkey has propped up a government of ethnic Turks on the north of the island that no other nation recognizes.

When Cyprus joined the EU in 2004, benefits of membership were only extended to the Greek-speaking side , and the conflict has threatened to derail Turkey's hopes of also joining the union.

Turkey has refused to extend its customs union to include Greek Cyprus, despite EU warnings that failing to do so would risk the suspension of membership talks. Turkey insists, however, that it will not open up to Cyprus until an international embargo against Turks on the island is lifted.

"If by the end of the year Turkey still does not recognize the 25 member states, notably including Cyprus, then it appears to me necessary to rethink the timetable for the adhesion of Turkey," French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy said last week.

France and Turkey are both NATO members, and Turkey has bought French weaponry. The two countries also have participated in military exercises together, and have sent troops to serve in the international peacekeeping force in Lebanon.

Turkey has said that the French lawmakers' vote has deeply harmed relations. A Turkish consumer's union has urged a boycott of French goods, and Turkey's broadcasting watchdog suggested a complete boycott of French films and other media.

The European Union has criticized the French bill, saying it is not in line with the principle of free expression. The United States also criticized the bill, saying it obstructs a Turkish-Armenian dialogue.

The Armenian issue is one of the most divisive and emotional in Turkey. Those who classify the killings as genocide are often accused of treason.

The Cypriots and the Kurds

Kirsty Hughes / International Herald Tribune

LONDON: Turkey complains vociferously about the European Union's unfair treatment of the politically and economically isolated Turkish Cypriots. Why then shouldn't Turkey grant a big chunk of its own citizens - the Kurds - the same rights it demands for people who are not even Turkish nationals?

There are many similarities between Northern Cyprus and the Turkish southeast, where many of Turkey's estimated 15 to 20 million Kurds live. They are geographically similar and are located in sensitive areas - the one off Syria's coast, the other bordering Iran, Iraq and Syria.

Both are relatively isolated and poor, though the Kurds are a lot poorer than the Turkish Cypriots. In both cases, poverty is linked to the unresolved political and security issues around their identity and political status.

But it's the differences that are more striking. Turkey is loudly championing the rights of Turkish Cypriots in the EU. But anyone who champions Kurdish rights in Turkey risks being accused of separatism and even terrorism.

While Turkey expects international support for its Cyprus solution, based on a bizonal, bicommunal federation with political equality between the two communities, it argues the precise opposite for its own Kurdish citizens.

For many Turks, any Kurdish request for national recognition - whether to be called Kurdish citizens of Turkey rather than Turks, or for a federation, or to use the Kurdish language in schools or in the media - is perceived as an attack on the Turkish nation and its territory.

While many Kurds are ready to remain within a unitary Turkish state so long as they can have full cultural rights, for most Turks the idea of Turkish Cypriots accepting simply minority status in a Greek-Cypriot dominated Republic of Cyprus is anathema.

The Turkish habit of stamping slogans onto mountainsides is evident both in Northern Cyprus and in southeastern Turkey. But on Cyprus, the slogans declaring the north to be the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus are directed at the Greek Cypriots across the Green Line, while in the desolate mountains of southeast Turkey, the slogans assert "one state, one flag, one language."

Many Turks will argue that the Cyprus problem and the Kurdish problem are not the same due to the violence of the Kurdistan Worker's Party (PKK), which has been fighting the Turkish military for over 20 years and is and labeled as a terrorist group by Turkey, the United States and the European Union. But why should violence by a minority of Kurds mean curtailing the rights of the majority of Kurds?

How can there be any hope of a political solution in either place without respect for the rights of both minority groups?

Where are the political leaders? Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is struggling on many fronts, not least to win re-election next year in the face of a nationalist and secularist onslaught, and also to keep Turkey's EU process on track despite negative signals from Europe and waning public enthusiasm in Turkey. Thus Erdogan may not be capable of making a deal on Cyprus, nor of making any progress on the southeast in the face of growing hostility both to him and to the Kurds.

And yet while some hardline Turkish nationalists may want an independent Northern Cyprus, and some radical Kurds may dream of an independent Kurdistan, the fact is that neither Turkey's southeast, nor Northern Cyprus has a realistic future as independent state.

In both cases the best hopes for an acceptable solution lie with a continuation of Turkey's EU negotiations.

Much of the solution lies in Turkey's hands. If Turkey's government and public stand up consistently for democracy and human rights - whether in support of Turkish Cypriots or Turkey's Kurds - and against the undemocratic political pronouncements of Turkey's military and nationalists, then it will be hard for democratic European politicians to give in to their nationalists and to suspend membership negotiations with Turkey.

Kirsty Hughes is a former senior fellow of the Centre for European Policy Studies, Brussels.

Winning back the Turks

F. Stephen Larrabee / International Herald Tribune

WASHINGTON: Once considered one of America's closest allies, Turkey today is engulfed by growing anti-Americanism. A recent survey by the German Marshall Fund found that only 7 percent of Turks polled approved of U.S. policies, while 81 percent disapproved. The poll found that 56 percent of the respondents thought that U.S. leadership was "very undesirable."

The main cause of the current rift dividing Turkey and the United States is the war in Iraq.

The Turks opposed the war - not out of any love for Saddam Hussein, but because they feared it would lead to greater sectarian violence and strengthen Kurdish nationalism. Over the last three years, Turkey's worst fears have come true.

America's invasion of Iraq seriously exacerbated Turkey's Kurdish problem and gave new impetus to the separatist struggle waged by the Kurdistan Workers Party, known by its Turkish initials of PKK.

Since January, more than 91 Turkish security officials have been killed in PKK attacks believed to originate from training camps in northern Iraq. Many Turks blame the United States for the increase in PKK violence, since northern Iraq is under U.S. control.

The government of Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan has repeatedly called upon the United States to take military action to eliminate PKK training camps in Iraq.

But while the United States has given verbal support to Turkey's struggle against the PKK, America has been reluctant to take any concrete action at a time when U.S. forces in Iraq are stretched thin.

Moreover, the United States has not wanted to irritate the Kurds in northern Iraq, whose support is needed to keep Iraq together.

This has given the impression to many Turks that the United States was siding with the Kurds on a security issue of paramount importance to Turkey, leading to increasing strains in relations between Ankara and Washington.

Frustrated by the lack of action and results, the Turkish government has threatened to take unilateral military action to destroy the PKK camps in northern Iraq.

The United States, however, strongly opposes any Turkish attacks in Iraq, fearing this could destabilize Kurdish areas of northern Iraq that are relatively tranquil.

In an effort to reduce Turkish anxiety, the Bush administration recently appointed a special envoy responsible for coordinating the U.S. response to the PKK. The appointment of retired General Joseph W. Ralston, former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and former NATO Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, is a welcome sign that the Bush administration is finally beginning to take Turkish concerns seriously.

However, to stem the tide of rising anti-Americanism in Turkey, Ralston's appointment needs to be followed up by further concrete actions by the United States to underscore American seriousness and resolve to end the PKK threat. Specifically, the United States should:

Arrest and turn over to the Turkish government the key leaders of the PKK, many of whom currently roam freely in northern Iraq.

Restrict PKK movements in northern Iraq by cutting the PKK's logistic lines.

Put the city of Kirkuk, which sits astride one of the world's largest oil deposits, under Iraqi rather than Kurdish administration.

This would help defuse Turkish fears that the recent massive return of Kurdish refugees expelled under Saddam Hussein will lead to the "Kurdization" of Kirkuk and an attempt by the Kurds to gain access to Kirkuk's oil wealth. If the Kurds succeed in that effort, they could use oil money to finance the establishment of an independent Kurdish state on Turkey's southern border.

Taken together, these actions would provide tangible proof that the United States is serious about helping Turkey eliminate the PKK terrorist threat, and would give concrete content to recent efforts to develop a serious strategic partnership with Turkey.

Failure to take these actions, on the other hand, is likely to lead to a further deterioration of U.S.-Turkish relations and an increasing estrangement of Turkey from the West.

F. Stephen Larrabee holds the corporate chair in European security at the Rand Corporation.

Harming Turkey's hopes likely to bolster terrorism

By Dennis Dr Sandole

Published: November 14 2006 02:00 | Last updated: November 14 2006 02:00

From Dr Dennis J.D. Sandole.

Sir, Against the background of discussion about Turkey's chances of accession to the European Union slipping away, Guler Sabanci's article ("Why the European Union needs Turkey", November 7) should be taken very seriously by Brussels and individual capitals such as Athens, Nicosia, Paris and Vienna.

Ms Sabanci reminds FT readers not just of the multi-ethnic, multi-denominational, geographical, historical and other advantages of Turkey being a member of the EU, but that it was the Greek Cypriots who, at the last minute, rejected the plan of Kofi Annan, United Nations secretary-general, for a "united" Cyprus to enter the EU in May 2004(a plan Turkish Cypriots had approved), thereby consigning Cyprus to remaining a divided island with the Turkish-Cypriot part isolated from the EU and international community up to the present time.

More important, however, is what Ms Sabanci does not say. As chairman of the Sabanci Group, a Turkish conglomerate, she presides over a business empire that established Sabanci University on the Asian side of Istanbul in the 1990s. Sabanci University is a modern, state-of-the-art academic institution where most courses are taught in English by Turkish and other professors who have earned their advanced degrees in the US, Canada, and elsewhere in the west.

Among the courses taught there is the world-class master's programme in conflict analysis and resolution, probably the premier course of its kind in the region. One of its goals is to educate and train cadres of conflict resolution professionals from all over the world who can help transform the current, self-fulfilling "clash of civilisations" into a "dialogue" - something Turkey's entry to the EU is also meant to do.

Turkey, like other states recently admitted (Greek Cyprus) or waiting for entry to the EU in the near future (Bulgaria, Romania, Croatia), needs time, patience, understanding and helpful assistance. Anything that serves to undermine prospects for its entry will also probably serve the interests of the perpetrators of global terrorism and, needless to say, exacerbate the near-deterministic dynamics of the "civilisational clash".

Dennis J.D. Sandole,

Professor of Conflict Resolution and International Relations,

Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution,

George Mason University,

Arlington, VA 22201, US

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2006

EU urged to call off talks with Turkey

By Daniel Dombey in Brussels

Published: November 14 2006 02:00 | Last updated: November 14 2006 02:00

The battle over Turkey's EU bid began in earnest on Monday, with Cyprus and Austria arguing that the European Union should halt negotiations.

In an interview with the Financial Times, Yiorgos Lillikas, Cypriot foreign minister, said it was not enough to suspend talks on a limited number of topics - one option being studied in Brussels.

Ursula Plassnik, Austrian foreign minister, called for "time out" from the negotiations, at an EU foreign ministers' meeting in Brussels.

The issue has come to a head because of Turkey's refusal to meet an EU demand to open its ports to vessels from Cyprus, which is an EU member but does not have diplomatic ties with Ankara.

Last week, the European Commission attempted to defuse the dispute by deferring its own recommendation on an EU response for a month.

But Mr Lillikas said heno longer held out hope the deadlock could be broken by compromise between Cyprus and Turkey. The Finnish EU presidency has spearheaded efforts to find a deal, but Mr Lillikas said Turkey had shown it was not interested.

Mr Lillikas said it would not be enough to suspend talks on a limited number of the outstanding 34 negotiating topics, since negotiations were already in effect suspended on several topics - where Cyprus has blocked them - and in many other areas it would take years before Turkey was in a position to negotiate.

Instead, Cyprus believes the EU should consider halting the entire talks while stopping short of a formal decision to put the process on hold.

Yesterday, Ali Babacan, Turkey's chief EU negotiator, said such a delay would have serious consequences for the EU, for Turkey, and the surrounding region.

But countries such as the UK and France believe the EU can still agree to halt talks on a certain number of chapters rather than delay the whole process, arguing that if the whole process were halted it might never be revived.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2006

Turkey given month to rescue EU bid

By Daniel Dombey andGeorge Parker in Brussels and Vincent,Boland in Ankara

Turkey was yesterday given a month to rescue its bid to join the European Union, as Brussels sought to allay public concerns that the EU is expanding too far and too fast. In response, Ankara said it was up to the 25-nation bloc to keep the negotiations alive.

"It is clear that Turkey is not fulfilling its obligations," Philippe Douste-Blazy, France's foreign minister, said yesterday. Unless Ankara changed its behaviour, "it seems to me necessary to review Turkey's EU membership timetable".

The issue is set to come to a head at an EU summit next month. But Olli Rehn, EU enlargement commissioner, held out hope that the looming "train wreck" over Turkey's membership could yet be averted. "While there's a will, there's a way," he said.

The European Commission had been considering whether to recommend the formal suspension of three or more of the 34 remaining negotiating "chapters" of Turkey's membership talks because of Ankara's failure to meet a key EU demand over Cyprus.

Yesterday Mr Rehn announced that the Commission would not make a recommendation at this stage, giving Turkey more time to meet the EU's concerns.

Officials said that Brussels would probably set out the likely penalties for Turkey in early to mid-December, ahead of the EU summit. But Mr Rehn's staff fears that if the EU takes too tough a stance with Ankara, either the talks will prove impossible to revive or Turkey will choose to walk away.

"At this point, much of the responsibility for continuing the [EU] accession process lies with the EU rather than with Turkey," said the Turkish government in an official statement. Ankara added that the issue of Cyprus should not be linked to its own membership bid.

But the Turkish statement appeared to acknowledge that its preparations for EU membership needed to be stepped up. "We will correct the problems stemming from implementation," said Abdullah Gul, Turkish foreign minister.

Yesterday's Commission report highlighted the issue that could bring the negotiations to a halt - the country's refusal to open up its ports to vessels from Cyprus, which is an EU member but which does not have diplomatic ties with Ankara.

The report also criticised Turkey for letting the pace of reform slow and expressed its concern over prosecutions of writers and journalists for criticising "Turkishness" and the Turkish state. The report voiced the Commission's concern that Turkey's judiciary was not yet sufficiently independent, that its military was not fully under civilian control and that some cases of torture were still being reported.

Mr Rehn said he hoped the Turkish parliament would amend the article in the country's penal code that the Commission believes restricts freedom of speech. He added that a Finnish attempt to broker a deal between Turkey, Cyprus and the self-styled Republic of Northern Cyprus was "the last opportunity to make serious progress for some years to come on this issue".

Such a deal would remove the biggest threat to Turkey's candidacy. However, many EU diplomats believe the likelihood of a Finnish breakthrough is slim. A ministerial meeting scheduled for last Sunday to reach a deal was cancelled.

Under the Finnish proposal, the Northern Cypriot port of Famagusta would come under EU management and be opened to trade with the rest of the EU.

At the same time, the UN would take charge of the neighbouring town of Varosha.

Mr Rehn also addressed wider public fears about the pace of EU expansion with new guidelines for future enlargements, but insisted the EU should not slam the door on any country with ambitions to join the club.

His paper on the union's "capacity to integrate new members" said any future enlargement should only come after the union had modernised its creaking institutions, probably by salvaging parts of the moribund EU constitution.

Learning the lessons of the difficult negotiations with Bulgaria and Romania - which will join the EU on January 1 - Mr Rehn said that future talks would have to tackle crime and corruption at an earlier stage.

But both he and José Manuel Barroso, European Commission president, have resisted pressure from politicians in France, Germany and elsewhere to make the EU's "absorption capacity" a new condition for membership and have refused to define the eventual eastern borders of the club.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2006

La UE ofrece a Turquía "la última oportunidad"

El comisario de Ampliación, Olli Rehn, lanzó ayer una seria advertencia al Gobierno de Ankara para que abra sus puertos y aeropuertos a los aviones y barcos chipriotas antes de fin de año. "Si Turquía no cumple con sus obligaciones", señaló Rehn, "esto afectará al progreso global de las negociaciones". El comisario pidió a Turquía y a los Estados miembros que "apoyen una propuesta de Finlandia, porque probablemente se trate de la última oportunidad para hacer progresos reales en los próximos años en la cuestión de Chipre".

El comisario hizo estas manifestaciones en la presentación del documento sobre la Estrategia de la Ampliación y los informes sobre los progresos efectuados por los actuales candidatos (Croacia, Turquía y Macedonia) y los aspirantes (Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro, Serbia y Kosovo). En su análisis global sobre las futuras ampliaciones, el comisario admitió que "la UE necesita un acuerdo sobre su reforma institucional antes de admitir a nuevos miembros".

En un documento anexo sobre la capacidad de integración de nuevos Estados miembros, Bruselas sostiene que "la legitimidad democrática es esencial para el proceso de ampliación de la UE". El texto no especifica, sin embargo, cómo aplicar el principio de la legitimidad democrática, si a través de los parlamentos o en referendos, como sugiere Francia. La Comisión se compromete a intensificar la transparencia, sobre todo los pasos de las futuras ampliaciones para que sean más aceptables para los ciudadanos.

El criterio de Bruselas sobre las futuras ampliaciones es que "la calidad es más importante que la velocidad", según el comisario. El ritmo de las futuras ampliaciones lo determinará la intensidad de las reformas efectuadas por cada candidato. Para aclarar las cosas, Rehn señaló que "esto no va a ser un tren de alta velocidad, sino más bien el Orient Express, donde la calidad de servicio y la seguridad de los pasajeros es prioritaria".

En su informe sobre Turquía, la Comisión reconoce los avances en relación con los temas económicos y las "reformas políticas", aunque lamenta que éstas se han moderado durante el último año. Reconoce que se han reducido las referencias sobre torturas y malos tratos, pero las acusaciones sobre estas prácticas "fuera de los centros de detención y en el sureste del país son motivo de preocupación". También se apremia a las autoridades turcas a hacer "más esfuerzos en materia de libertad de expresión", conminándoles a eliminar o revisar el artículo 301 del Código Penal, cuya interpretación ha permitido acusaciones contra medio centenar de escritores y periodistas.

En cualquier caso, la cuestión más polémica es la negativa de Turquía a abrir sus puertos y aeropuertos a barcos y aviones chipriotas. Para desatascar este contencioso, la presidencia finlandesa trabaja intensamente sobre una propuesta de cuatro puntos: apertura del comercio entre las dos partes de la isla, apertura del puerto de Famagusta (en la zona turcochipriota, que quedaría bajo control de la UE), devolución de la ciudad abandonada de Varosha a la zona grecochipriota, y congelación de todas las posibles operaciones sobre las propiedades de los grecochipriotas en la parte norte de la isla.

El acuerdo debería facilitar que Turquía abriera algunos de sus puertos y aeropuertos a las naves y aeronaves de Chipre. La Comisión no ha propuesto por ahora la suspensión de las negociaciones. Pero Rehn pidió ayer a Turquía que apoye la propuesta de Finlandia.

ANDREU MISSÉ - Bruselas

EL PAÍS - Internacional - 09-11-2006

Brussels sets deadline for Turkey

The European Commission has given Turkey until mid-December to open its ports to Cypriot ships, or face unspecified consequences.

The warning is set out in a report criticising the pace of Turkish reforms in the year since EU entry talks began.

The Commission says it will make "relevant recommendations" to EU leaders if Turkey does not meet its obligations towards Cyprus.

Correspondents say the leaders may opt to freeze Turkey's membership talks.

The decision would be made at a summit in Brussels on 14 and 15 December.

Turkey agreed last year to extend its customs union with the EU to Cyprus, which joined the bloc in 2004, but has not done so, with the result that Turkish ports and airports remain closed to Cypriot traffic.

"Failure to implement its obligations in full will affect the overall progress in the negotiations," the report says.

"The Commission will make relevant recommendations ahead of the December European Council if Turkey has not fulfilled its obligations."

Turks tiring

The report says Ankara must ensure freedom of expression "without delay" by repealing or amending article 301 of the penal code, which has led to the prosecution of numerous writers for "insulting Turkishness".

It also raises serious concerns about allegations of torture, freedom of religion, women's and trade union rights, civilian control over the military, and the rights and freedoms of the Kurdish population.

Correspondents say Turks are tiring of the constant pressure from Brussels and are increasingly convinced that the EU does not see the country as a future member.

Some polls show support for EU membership plummeting as low as 30%.

Nevertheless, Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul said his country was committed to EU membership and remained "determined to meet all criteria set by the EU".

He said all sides must "take a step forward" to resolve the dispute over Cyprus.

Another European Commission report summing up the state of play with the EU's enlargement policy, says the 2004 expansion of the EU, which took membership from 15 to 25 states, has been a "considerable success" increasing prosperity across the bloc.

But it says there will not be another "big bang" expansion, in which several countries join at once, and that scrutiny of candidate countries' political reforms will be stepped up in future.

Further expansion

Bulgaria and Romania are due to join in January 2007, but the Commission says "a new institutional settlement" streamlining the way the EU operates should have been reached before any further members can join.

Officials emphasise that reaching an institutional settlement does not necessarily mean passing the constitution, which was voted down by voters in French and Dutch referendums last year.

They also insist that Croatia could still join the EU by the end of the decade.

Another Commission report issued on Wednesday, on the EU's capacity to absorb new members, avoids setting geographical limits to the EU.

Correspondents say it gives some hope to would-be members such as Ukraine or Moldova - but stresses that keeping its promises to existing candidates in the Balkans and Turkey is a higher priority.

Blowing in different directions?

ALL this year analysts have given warning that Turkey’s membership negotiations with the European Union are being blown off course. Yet only in the past few weeks have people taken serious steps to prevent that happening. A report published by the European Commission on Wednesday November 8th will kick off a frantic period before an EU summit in mid-December, during which political leaders will try desperately to keep the talks going, at least in part, rather than suspending them altogether.

The commission report is highly critical of Turkey. It faults Turkey for backsliding on many promised reforms; for continuing human-rights violations; and for not scrapping the notorious article 301, which makes it a criminal offence to insult “Turkishness”. Above all the commission berates Turkey for not fulfilling its obligation to extend a free-trade protocol to Cyprus, which would mean opening up its ports and airports to the Greek-Cypriots, by the end of the year. The commission stops short of recommending an immediate suspension of the membership talks: but that may come to pass if Turkey does not give some ground by the December summit.

Will Turkey do so? Recently the prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, softened his tone on Europe and even promised that article 301 would, after all, be amended. Yet he is refusing to move on Cyprus. He is conscious that there is a new mood of nationalist obduracy among ordinary Turks, who seem ever more disillusioned with the EU. The perception is that Brussels is always demanding change and reform but never offering anything in return. On Cyprus, for example, Greek-Cypriots voted down the 2004 Annan plan to reunify the island, and have since blocked the EU from restoring direct links to the Turkish-Cypriot north—yet the Greek Cypriots are still demanding that Turkey open up its own ports and airports.

Worse still, over the past year or so, political leaders across Europe have been making increasingly negative comments about Turkey’s prospects of joining the EU. In Germany the Christian Democrats, led by Chancellor Angela Merkel, have long been strongly against Turkish membership, even if she has been careful not to block it since she took office. Almost all parties in Austria oppose Turkish entry. In France Nicolas Sarkozy, the centre-right front-runner for next year’s presidential election, has also come out firmly against—and the French constitution now requires a referendum be held before Turkey can join.

Domestic politics in Turkey is not helping matters. Mr Erdogan and his mildly Islamist AK Party are preparing for elections next year, both to parliament and to the presidency. Popular support for EU membership has fallen sharply over the past two years, from around two-thirds of those asked to only one-third. The army, the ruling party and the opposition all resent the demands being made by Brussels. The war in Iraq is also a big problem. Many Turks have turned against America because of it, and some have adopted a broader anti-Western attitude. There is outrage in the Turkish establishment over the increasing autonomy that has been given to the Kurdish northern part of Iraq, which it is feared may only encourage breakaway Kurds in Turkey.

Finland, which currently holds the presidency of the EU, will spend the next few weeks trying to broker a deal over Cyprus, probably involving an agreement whereby Turkey would open its ports to Greek-Cypriots in exchange for allowing Turkish-Cypriots to export goods, under EU supervision, through Famagusta, a port now in Turkish-Cypriot hands. Yet a plan to negotiate just such a deal last weekend was stymied when the parties refused to attend a meeting together. There is no guarantee that the Finns can pull off a deal.

The brinksmanship is likely to continue right up to the December summit. Even if that proves calmer than some expect, with the Turkish parliamentary election to be held in November 2007 there is plenty of opportunity for more stormy times to come.

A road to nowhere? Why Turkey's long journey west is in jeopardy

By Daniel Dombey and Vincent Boland

Published: November 8 2006 02:00 | Last updated: November 8 2006 02:00

The last time Abdullah Gül, Turkey's foreign minister, met his European Union counterparts, the occasion itself was a stark reminder of the divide that frustrates Ankara's hopes of joining the EU.

Although Mr Gül, a devout Muslim, was observing the Ramadan fast, the Luxembourg meeting a few weeks ago began with what was billed as a working lunch.

Things went downhill from there. The EU representatives proceeded to chide Turkey for its alleged shortcomings, ahead of a crucial EU report that comes out today on Turkey's membership preparations. The incident revealed the strains in the relationship between Turkey and the EU - tensions that now risk getting out of hand.

"The accession process of Turkey is a crucial event, not just for the EU and Turkey but for the future of Europe and the future of east-west relations," Ali Babacan, Turkey's chief EU negotiator, told the FT recently. He added that if its membership bid stalled because of the current difficulties "the consequences could be devastating".

This large, poor, secular-but-Muslim nation of 72m people has been knocking on Europe's door since at least 1923, when the republic was founded from the ruins of the Ottoman Empire. Today, when the European Commission publishes what is set to be a damning report on Turkey's progress in accession negotiations, the problems in Ankara's relations with Europe will laid out for the world to see.

Many EU officials fear that the report will set the stage for a full-blown crisis, which could end with the suspension of Ankara's EU negotiations and a halt to the country's 150-year push to modernise and westernise.

The Commission will point to two main complaints about Turkey: that the government has failed to follow through on political and economic reforms and on its commitment in a deal signed last year to open its ports and airports to traffic from Cyprus.

"To avoid this train crash, Turkey needs to relaunch the reform process with full determination and meet its obligations on Cyprus," Olli Rehn, the EU's enlargement commissioner, said last month. He argues that EU leaders also need to pay much more attention to the issue than they have to date.

The consequences of a complete breach would not just be political. The belief that Turkey is committed to undertaking the reforms necessary to join the EU has been a key peg for financial markets for the past four years. Now, it appears that investors are taking that underpinning for granted, ignoring the unstated but incontestable fact that Turkey's EU accession process has, for the moment at least, ground to a halt. Tolga Ediz, an economist who covers Turkey for Lehman Brothers, argues that this could be a costly mistake for investors.

A crisis is not what either Turkey or the EU's leaders envisaged when they agreed to begin the country's EU accession process just under two years ago. But since that date, December 17 2004, the news concerning Turkey's preparations for membership has been overwhelmingly negative.

Turkish and European officials acknowledged then that the negotiations might never lead to actual membership - France's constitutional obligation to hold a referendum on Turkish entry to the EU saw to that. But they added that, even if there were a crisis five or so years down the line, the process was still likely to be mutually beneficial. The impetus of the EU talks would push Turkey to carry out constitutional and economic reforms that were both in its own interest and made the country look palpably more western and modern.

Instead, the crisis has already arrived, after two years when neither side has much to show for the negotiations. Indeed, both parties can justifiably accuse the other of having failed to meet its commitments. A process Turkey and the EU had been keento depict as a virtuous circlehas instead become a vicious cycle of recrimination.

The backdrop for the looming crisis is Turkey's reform record. The pace of reform slowed after the 2002-04 period, two years in which the moderate Islamist government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan pushed through constitutional changes that reduced the role of the military in the political arena and redrew the country's penal code.

A draft of today's report voices "serious concern" about freedom of expression in Turkey, questions the independence of the country's judiciary and concludes that the military has yet to come under full civilian control. Throughout its dozens of pages, the report rarely commends Turkey for the advances it has made in the past year. Instead, on topic after topic, the refrain is of limited progress or none at all.

Many European officials worry that the reason that Turkey has made so little progress is that the pro-EU coalition within the country has splintered.

When Mr Erdogan's party came to power, both it and the EU process were overwhelmingly popular. Indeed the popularity of the EU transcended some of the deepest divisions in Turkish society. Turkey's powerful military be-lieved that the perspective of membership would reduce the power of the Islamists; Mr Erdogan's AKP thought it would reduce that of the military, as well as guaranteeing religious freedom. Turkish business favoured the EU. So did minority groups, such as Turkey's Kurds, who thought that the bloc would bolster their rights.

But support for the EU is no longer what it was. In 2004, a poll by the Turkish newspaper Milliyet said 67 per cent of respondents thought Turkey should definitely enter the EU. Last month the figure was 32 per cent.

In the intervening period, the controversy about the 2003 invasion of Iraq has battered the west's reputation within Turkey. The US, in particular, has seen its popularity plummet. In a recent poll by the German Marshall Fund, only 14 per cent of Turkish respondents said they supported US leadership of world affairs.

"The US and Europe have been the two anchors of the west in Turkey," says Ron Asmus, head of the GMF's Brussels office. "Now the US anchor is badly damaged and the EU anchor does not look in good shape." The risk he highlights is of a country in one of the most sensitive regions in the world slipping away from the Euro-Atlantic principles to which it has held firm for the past half-century.

What makes things worse is that the EU itself has visibly grown more hostile to the idea of enlargement in the wake of the May 2004 inclusion of 10 mainly ex-communist countries. A strategy paper, also due to be adopted by the Commission today, makes clear that the EU will expand beyond 27 member states - Romania and Bulgaria are joining on January 1 - only in the "medium or long term", after the bloc has reformed its institutions.

In a Commission survey published in July, 48 per cent of EU citizens opposed Turkish membership, even if Ankara met all the bloc's conditions. Only 39 per cent supported membership. The figures are still more striking in some of the individual countries that would have to agree Turkish membership. In France 54 per cent were opposed, in Germany 69 per cent and in Austria 81 per cent.

Such figures have bolstered suspicions within Turkey that the bloc has little or no intention of giving Turkey membership and that the negotiations with Brussels are a road to nowhere. As a result, Ankara is still less disposed to make a compromise on the one crucial issue that could bring its EU quest to a halt - Cyprus.

The internationally recognised Greek Cypriot government in the south of the island coexists uneasily with the self-styled Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. A United Nations plan to reunify the island failed in 2004 after being rejected by the Greek Cypriot population and government, although it was backed by the Turkish Cypriots.

In response, the EU vowed in April 2004 to end the isolation of the Turkish Cypriots by allowing trade between the north of the island and the rest of the EU. But Cyprus, which became an EU member less than a week later, has consistently vetoed any such move. Turkey regards this as a sign of the EU's bad faith. Ankara has maintained its refusal to open up its own ports to Cypriot ships - despite an EU warning last year that if Turkish ports were not opened, "overall progress in the negotiations" would be affected.

Now, the crunch is coming. The Commission will today tell Turkey that the negotiations will suffer unless Ankara opens its ports in the next few weeks. The underlying threat is that, unless Turkey relents by December, the Commission will recommend a suspension of the negotiating "chapters" most closely linked to the Cyprus dispute. But France, Greece and Cyprus want to send a much stronger signal that many more parts of the negotiations will be affected if Ankara does not meet the EU's demand.

All indications are that the dispute will reach a climax at a mid-December summit of EU leaders. A formal decision to suspend the entire negotiations remains unlikely. But EU officials fear two things, above all: first, that the summit will be unable to agree an EU line on how to respond to Ankara's defiance, leaving the talks technically in limbo and in effect suspended, and second, that Turkey may at some point just walk away if the EU pitches its demands too high.

With the popularity of the EU flagging within Turkey, and Mr Erdogan keen to build bridges with nationalist elements within the Turkish state and society, such a gesture may be seen as reasserting national pride.

Amid such fears, some pro-Turkey officials are trying to keep their spirits up. One argument is that expectations are now so low that a breakthrough can be achieved with relatively little. Mr Erdogan signalled at the weekend that Turkey might consider altering article 301 of its penal code, which outlaws criticism of Turkishness or the Turkish state.

To many western eyes this article, the basis of the abortive prosecutions of the writers Orhan Pamuk and Elif Shafak, has become the symbol of everything that is wrong with Turkey today. If it really were to be amended or junked, the atmosphere surrounding the Turkey debate would certainly lighten.

Mr Ediz of Lehman Brothers concurs that the best way for the logjam to be broken is for Turkey to restore the momentum of domestic reforms. "Unless the government accelerates reform, EU leaders may want to give Turkey a wake-up call while stopping short of full suspension" at the December summit, he wrote last week.

Another hope is that Finland, which has striven without success to broker a temporary deal between Turkey and Cyprus, will yet manage to forge a compromise. Indeed, all the steps Turkey has taken towards the EU to date have become possible only after last-minute deals.

"I think everyone will step back from the brink," says one diplomat. "At the end of the day, whose interest is it to bring a halt to these talks?" He argues that though the talks have borne little fruit over the past two years, that is no reason to rule out change in the future - particularly after Turkish parliamentary elections in a year's time. If, on the other hand, the negotiations come to a halt, anything is possible - including a much more Islamist or nationalist style of government in Ankara.

But the diplomat concedes that, unlike past occasions. the crisis is not just a question of dramatics intended to impress electorates in Cyprus, Turkey and elsewhere. This time, although the stakes are enormous, the outcome is genuinely uncertain. Worst of all, the peoples of Turkey and Europe are becoming visibly disenchanted with each other.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2006