Missteps hobble Turkey-EU waltz

But the approach of elections next year, coupled with a drop in public support for EU membership to 50 percent from 80 percent two years ago, means that leaders of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) "don't want to take risks," says Mensur Akgun with the Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation, a think tank in Istanbul.

The government "is focusing on elections and on the mood in the country, and that mood is very inward-looking," says the European diplomat. "Instead of showing the way and leadership, the government is listening much more to these ghosts that have been haunting Turkey for decades."

"There is a rising nationalism in the country," adds Mr. Akgun, and the AKP "has a constituency that is rather conservative in a nationalist sense, and they have to reciprocate to their feelings."

That nationalism has been fed by two rebuffs from the EU.

Ankara is galled that the Turkish-populated half of the divided Mediterranean island of Cyprus remains under economic embargo even though Turkish Cypriots accepted a UN plan to reunite the two sides.

Late last year, religious Turks were upset when a European Court of Human Rights ruling upheld Turkey's head scarf ban in public universities.

Turks have also been angered by a vote next Thursday in the French Parliament on a bill that would criminalize any statement casting doubt on the Armenians' claim that they suffered genocide at Turkish hands in 1915. The bill would impose jail sentences and a fine on historians, journalists, or others who challenge Armenians' version of events, in the same way French law punished revisionists who deny the Holocaust.

The bill is unlikely to pass, but it reflects longstanding mistrust of Turkey in Europe. That mistrust is fed by freedom-of-expression cases being brought against writers, says Joost Lagendijk, who heads the European Parliament delegation to the joint EU-Turkey parliamentary committee.

"The mood in Europe is that nothing has happened in Turkey since October except setbacks," warns Mr. Lagendijk.

Quietly, Turkish and EU civil servants have been reviewing the 35 "chapters" of Turkish legislation that will have to be brought into line with EU law, and have agreed on negotiating points for 19 of them, officials say. Substantive negotiations on education and science are due to begin next month.

Nobody expects Turkey to join the EU until 2015, even if things go well. That, says Lagendijk, is a good thing, since EU citizens are displaying doubts about the union's future and purpose.

"We have some time ourselves to solve our own problems before we have to deal with Turkey," he says. "In the meantime, the negotiations will continue behind the scenes."

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