Turkish PM loses EU card in election campaign

(ANKARA) - Launching Turkey's membership talks with the European Union was Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's biggest foreign policy achievement but, two years on, it is a subject he would rather avoid during his Justice and Development Party's election campaign.

Instead, Erdogan is fighting opposition charges of "submitting" to what Turks have widely come to see as a patronising, humiliating and torturous EU accession process whose ultimate aim of membership for this mainly Muslim nation appears more elusive than ever.

Ankara's enthusiasm for reform has waned and public support nosedived amid frequent rows with Brussels.

Some EU members, notably France, are actively pushing for alternatives that fall short of full membership for Turkey, whose candidacy has added to the bloc's own indecision about its future.

In Turkey's eyes, Brussels "is determined to siderail its application for all eternity," Andrew Finkel, a veteran observer of Turkey, wrote recently.

"So no ruling party in Turkey can go to the polls bragging that it has filled out the form to join a club that laughs at it behind its back," he said.

The latest blow came in June when Nicolas Sarkozy, in one of his first diplomatic successes as French president, blocked the start of EU talks with Turkey on monetary policy, although the European Commission said Ankara was technically ready to negotiate the chapter.

"The government can gain nothing by making the EU process an election issue," said Mehmet Ozcan from the Ankara-based think-tank USAK.

The democracy reforms Erdogan's AKP carried out to win the green light for accession talks in 2005 "led to a significant transformation in Turkey, but this is being completely ignored" ahead of Sunday's poll, he said.

Domestic factors too helped reduce the appeal of the pro-EU stance.

Fresh violence by separatist Kurdish rebels in southeast Turkey strengthened the hand of the Justice and Development Party's (AKP) nationalist opponents who argue that EU demands for greater freedoms for the Kurdish minority are encouraging the insurgency.

Eager to capitalise on simmering public anger over the mounting death toll, opposition parties attack the AKP as unpatriotic and gutless over its reluctance to heed army calls for an incursion into neighbouring Iraq, where the rebels enjoy safe haven.

Among them is the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP), which, although officially for EU membership, has shown little appetite for democracy reforms.

In April, it led an army-backed campaign that blocked parliament electing Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul to the presidency on the grounds that a head of state from the Islamist-rooted AKP would undermine Turkey's secular regime.

The CHP has also opposed amending an infamous law that penalises "insulting Turkishness" and landed several leading intellectuals in court.

Among them were 2006 Nobel literature laureate Orhan Pamuk and ethnic Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, who was shot dead by an ultranationalist teenager in January.

The far-right Nationalist Action Party, widely expected to get more than 10 percent of the national vote needed to gain parliamentary representation in Sunday's election, is openly hostile to the EU.

Its election manifesto says Turkey's bid has become "a story of disillusion... blackmail, fiats and unjust demands" and calls for a pause in the process "for strategic reflection."

But public oppinion surveys show that despite its woes, the AKP is still Turkey's most popular party and stands a good chance of again forming the next government on its own.

Analysts, however, say its declared commitment to reform will not suffice to revive Ankara's membership bid as long as EU nations fail to resolve the bloc's own rifts and send a unified signal that Turkey's membership is genuinely desired.

"Not even the most pro-EU party in Turkey can resolve the impasse if the EU's internal problems remain unsolved," Ozcan said.

EU expert Cengiz Aktar was even more pessimistic: "The AKP says it is still committed to EU membership, but it takes two to tango and the EU is not there any more."