Turkey's refusal to open up its ports is dividing the European Union, with several member states pressing for a tough stance against Ankara this week.
The European Commission will decide on Wednesday whether to recommend a partial suspension of Turkey's membership negotiations because of the country's failure to open its ports to Cyprus, an EU member.
The Commission debate opens the way for a full-blooded dispute among EU countries, which officials fear could bring the Turkey negotiations to a halt.
José Manuel Barroso, Commission president, and Olli Rehn, enlargement commissioner, want to limit the impact on the membership negotiations. One step under their consideration is to recommend the suspension of three negotiating topics linked to trade.
But commissioners Jacq-ues Barrot of France, Markos Kyprianou of Cyprus and Stavros Dimas of Greece all want Brussels to send out a strong message that more parts of the negotiations will be affected if Ankara does not meet the EU's demand.
Benita Ferrero-Waldner of Austria is also keen that the Commission should set out a firm line on Turkey, distinguishing it from Croatia, the other country in EU membership negotiations.
France, Cyprus, Austria and Greece are all pushing for a tough stance on Turkey, with the UK championing efforts to keep the talks on course. Cyprus has said it will veto any attempts to begin negotiations on new topics with Turkey unless it meets the EU demand.
"If the issue was just Turkey not opening its ports, that would be one thing," said an EU diplomat, who argued that if the dispute were purely commercial it might be appropriate to suspend only a small number of negotiating topics. "But remember that the Commission will also report on Wednesday that Turkey is not making progress on reforms. This is a question of political control of the EU's enlargement process."
In a sign of the sensitivity of the debate about reforms, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey's prime minister, indicated yesterday that he was ready to amend an article of the Turkish penal code that the Commission says inhibits free speech.
"We are ready for proposals to make article 301 more concrete if there are problems stemming from it being vague," he said.
On Wednesday, the Commission will also adopt a strategy paper for future enlargement, which says that before any new expansion takes place, the EU will have to deal with its own institutional arrangements - which were to have been decided by the ill-fated European constitution.
A draft of the paper seen by the Financial Times also says that the "EU is defined by its values rather than by fixed geographical limits" - a phrase to which Mr Barrot objects.
Nicolas Sarkozy, a front-runner for France's presidency, says Turkey should not be in the EU, partly because most of the country's land mass is in Asia.
Additional reporting by Andrew Bounds
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2006
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