Catching the Continental Drift

The Turks will appreciate the painfully ironic timing of the death of Bulent Ecevit, one of Turkey's most prominent politicians.

For much of his political career, Mr Ecevit was a staunch nationalist, suspicious of free market policies. But, during his final years, the former prime minister dropped his hostility to private enterprise and decided that it was in his country's interest to be part of the EU. He had helped keep Turkey out of Europe in the 1970s.

His death yesterday at the age of 81 came in a crucial week for Turkey's accession hopes. Later this week, the European commission is expected to publish what is expected to be a report critical of Turkey's lack of progress in undertaking political reforms in preparation for membership. The report will have a critical bearing on an EU summit in December that will have to decide to whether to continue with increasingly difficult entry talks.

The Turkish prime minister, Recep Erdogan, yesterday offered another concession to the EU by signalling his willingness to amend a law limiting free speech.

The Turkish law that makes "denigration of the Turkish state and identity" a crime, is a problem for the EU. It has been used to prosecute Turkish intellectuals, including Orhan Pamuk, the recipient of this year's Nobel prize for literature, and Elif Safak, another acclaimed novelist.

Mr Erdogan has now acknowledged that the language of the law, known as Article 301, is vague. "If there are problems that stem from the abstract nature of Article 301 of the Turkish penal code, we are open to suggestions to make it more specific," he said. That will please the EU, but not Turkey's nationalists, who are already losing patience with what they see as a continual raising of the bar for membership.

Complicating matters is a transport dispute between Turkey and Cyprus. Under a customs union protocol it signed in 2005, Turkey is supposed to open its airports and ports to planes and ships from Cyprus, an EU member. Turkey has refused on the grounds that the EU has failed to honour a pledge to lift the economic and political blockade of Turkish Cypriots in return for their support for a UN-backed reunification plan.

Beyond political reform and the transport dispute, however, lie even greater barriers to Turkey's entry. "Enlargement fatigue" grips the EU now that it has reached 25 members and has others - including Romania and Bulgaria - also lining up.

Voters in Germany, France and Austria are particularly resistant to Turkey, partly to do with anti-Muslim sentiment, but also because of fears that companies will up sticks to yet another country with cheap labour.

Yet the strategic rationale for having Turkey within the EU is stronger than ever. Membership would bolster outward-looking and reform-minded Islamists such as Mr Erdogan and help make Turkey a showcase democratic Muslim state.

Katynka Barysch, an analyst at the London thinktank the Centre for European Reform, believes the best-case scenario is that both the EU and Turkey will muddle through this difficult patch.

"Nobody wants to upset the apple cart," she said. "But if the EU does something drastic like suspend the entry talks, then Turkey could walk away. Erdogan can court popularity by blaming the EU and say 'I've tried my best.'"

Once he became a convert to EU membership, Mr Ecevit said: "It is now understood that there can be no Europe without Turkey and no Turkey without Europe."

His words are worth remembering in what are likely to be difficult times ahead for the EU and Turkey.