Cyprus Shipping Row Leaves Turkey Talks in Doldrums

A full suspension of membership talks is unlikely, Turkey's chief EU negotiator said today after the breakdown of efforts to reach a compromise on Cyprus.

Ali Babacan, who is heading Ankara's negotiating team, said he did not rule out such a possibility, but thought it quite distant.

"We are not expecting a white or black result, we should expect a shade of grey," Mr Babacan told an audience at Chatham House, the international affairs thinktank in London.

Mr Babacan was speaking a day after the collapse of efforts to solve a dispute over Turkey's refusal to open its ports and airports to Greek Cypriot shipping. The EU now has to decide to what extent accession negotiations should be put on hold.

Supporters of Turkey, led by Britain, will call for a light punishment while opponents, such as Cyprus, want a strong signal of disapproval. EU leaders are expected to take the final decision at their summit in Brussels on December 14-15.

Britain and several of the EU's Nordic members favour suspending only a relatively small part of the talks - three out of the 34 remaining negotiating "chapters".

Cyprus has emerged as a major stumbling block in negotiations. Ankara does not recognise Cyprus diplomatically and has refused to allow Greek Cypriot vessels to use its ports. Turkey says it will not do so as long as the ethnically Turkish north of the island remains isolated.

Yet Cyprus is an EU member and Brussels last year demanded that Turkey allow Cypriot ships to use its ports this year. Turkey rejected an EU compromise which would have handed control of a port in Turkish-occupied northern Cyprus to the EU.

Mr Barbacan said the EU and Turkey had entered a new stage in negotiations, with the two sides dealing with more and more political issues.

He acknowledged that public opinion was becoming more important, a reference to "enlargement fatigue" in France and Germany, now that the EU has grown to 25 members, and to unease in some EU members that Turkey is a mainly Muslim country, albeit a secular state.

Mr Barbacan, however, said the inclusion of Turkey within the EU would increase the EU's relevance, give it a more representative voice and make it truly multicultural.

"The perception of the EU in the Muslim world will change forever," Mr Barbacan said.

Analysts say a breakdown in accession talks would have an immediate impact on Turkish politics.

"The goal of EU membership has helped to ensure that two camps which do not trust each other - the secular "Kemalists" in the army, judiciary and bureaucracy, and the Islamists in the ruling AKP government - work together on a reform agenda," said Katinka Barysch and Charles Grant in a recent paper for the Centre for European Reform, a London thinktank.

"But the removal of that goal and the consequent recriminations could destabilise the political system."