European Diary: Turkey's 40-year mission to join the European Union is in trouble again.
Barely a year after EU foreign ministers grudgingly gave the go-ahead for accession talks to begin at a cantankerous meeting in Luxembourg, diplomats are warning of a "train crash" in the negotiations that could lead to their suspension.
The European Commission will play a key role in deciding whether the talks need to be frozen when it publishes a report on November 8th on Turkey's progress since they began in October 2005.
The state of human rights, freedom of expression and the penal code will be analysed in the report, which is expected to reprimand Ankara for a slowdown in the pace of reform.
However, it is Turkey's refusal to open its ports and airports to Greek Cypriot traffic until the EU ends its economic embargo of Turkish northern Cyprus that is the crunch issue that could lead to a suspension of talks.
British ambassador to Turkey Peter Westmacott warned yesterday that the EU would hold Turkey to account for failing to comply with the Ankara protocol - a 2005 deal to extend Turkey's customs union to the 10 new member states, including (Greek) Cyprus.
"The negotiations, once stalled, would be very hard to restart," said Mr Westmacott, whose government is one of the strongest advocates of Turkey's accession.
Cyprus has been divided since Turkey invaded the island's north in 1974 following an abortive coup supported by Greece. The Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus is not recognised by any EU state and relies primarily on support from Turkey. An economic embargo forces all EU exports and air traffic to travel through Turkey and the entity was excluded from EU membership when Cyprus joined the union in 2004.
Fuelled by resentment against Cyprus for rejecting a UN-sponsored peace plan in 2004, Turkey is now insisting the EU lift the isolation of northern Cyprus before it adheres to the Ankara protocol.
In retaliation, Greece and Cyprus are already using their EU vetoes to block Turkey's accession talks, which have resulted in just one chapter of law - science and research - being completed in a year of negotiation.
"I wouldn't call it a veto; it is more a consideration We must go slowly as we want Turkey to honours its commitments," said a Greek diplomat yesterday, who added that both states would not allow any new chapters to be opened ahead of November 8th.
This leaves Turkey's accession talks in limbo, with a further 34 chapters of legislation to be amended to comply with the 90,000 pages in the EU acquis communautaire.
With a potential crisis just a month away, the current EU president, Finland, a strong supporter of enlargement, is preparing a plan to prevent the complete derailment of the talks. The proposals involve opening a small number of Turkish ports to Cypriot traffic. In return Turkish Cypriot trade restrictions would be eased by opening a sea port on the east of the island under EU supervision, say EU diplomats.
Another controversial proposal under consideration is getting the Turkish military to hand over administration of the northern town of Varosha to the UN. More than 40,000 Greek Cypriots fled the town after the 1974 invasion. Since then Varosha has become a ghost town and a symbol of the invasion and continuing division of Cyprus.
But at an EU foreign ministers' meeting in Luxembourg yesterday the Greek Cypriot delegation insisted that Nicosia would not accept any plan that didn't return the town to its former inhabitants.
The response of the Turkish Cypriot government has been cautious too. Last week President Mehmet Ali Talat, on his first visit to Brussels, said the Finnish plan included "dangerous elements". Mr Talat warned that the plan made the issue of the lifting of the isolation of Turkish Cypriots a bargaining chip. This was unfair, as the EU had already agreed to lift the embargo in 2004 when the Turkish Cypriots voted in favour of unification as part of a UN plan that Nicosia rejected, he said.
Despite scepticism in Cyprus, enlargement commissioner Olli Rehn warned yesterday that the Finnish proposals were now the "only game in town" for Turkey, which he praised as "an anchor of stability" and "bridge-builder" in an unstable Middle East.
Yet the fear expressed by pro-Turkish diplomats in the EU is that a suspension of the accession talks over Cyprus could turn the country away from Europe. With tensions already high in Turkey over French lawmakers' proposal to make denying the genocide of the Armenians a crime, a negative signal from Brussels could hamper domestic reformers.
"Already you have seen a drastic drop in support for EU membership in Turkey. It has fallen 20 per cent in just two years," says Katinka Barysch, analyst with the think tank Centre for European Reform in London. "At the start of the accession process Turkish people were happy to be part of it; now there is a real risk of disillusionment."