The EU's reluctance to give Ankara the green light for membership is mirrored by mixed feelings in Turkey, reports Nicholas Birch
For the nearly 70 per cent of Turks whom opinion polls routinely show supporting Turkey's accession to the EU, 2002 should be remembered as a good year.
Capital punishment was abolished, cultural rights were extended to the country's Kurdish and other minorities, the end of martial law in the troubled south-east came after 15 years and 35,000 deaths.
You can understand the enthusiasm of the overwhelmingly pro-EU media here, convinced that Turkey has done everything necessary to assure the approval of Brussels.
For months now pundits have been predicting that elections early this November would be a straightforward showdown between europhiles and europhobes.
Yet, as the European Commission prepares to deliver what is expected to be a less-than-optimistic progress report tomorrow, the Turkish election campaign is turning out to be just as ambiguous.
Even the popular Islamic AK Party, whole europhilia stems at least in part from the sense that it will be safer with Europe than with Turkey's hostile establishment, has bolstered its campaign with calls for "honourable accession" taken straight from the rhetoric of nationalism.
And despite spending the summer blocking every one of the government's proposals to bring Turkey into line with European legal norms, not even the ultra-nationalist National Action Party dares to declare itself out-and-out anti-European.
Retired diplomat Gunduz Aktan thinks parties' refusal to take a clear stance is a pity. "Turkey urgently needs a discussion on the pros and cons of accession," he says, if only as "an alternative to the EU-infatuation of big business and the media."
It will have to wait. For the moment it is clear that Turks have no time for the niceties of intellectual debate. Though many of them may dream of Europe, their reality is massive recession and unemployment that has risen by at least two million in 18 months.
"I have never seen Turks so full of anger and hatred," says veteran journalist Mehmet Ali Birand, anchorman for CNN-Turk TV.
Part of their anger is directed at their leaders, of course. Opinion polls show support for the three parties in the government coalition plummeting from more than 50 per cent in 1999 to less than 10 per cent today. But according to Yalcin Dogan, former editor-in-chief of Milliyet, "a key element is the feeling that Turks must defend their rights against a hostile world".
The politician quickest to spot this has been Cem Uzan, billionaire media mogul and head of the newly-founded Youth Party. For his critics, his political adventure is merely a means of avoiding imprisonment. His former business partner, the American company Motorola, accuses him of pocketing $2.5 billion of its funds.
But an increasing number of Turks don't seem to care. Buoyed by a potent mixture of media propaganda and nationalist rhetoric, his ratings have risen from zero to 13 per cent in little more than a month. The Youth Party is now third behind the Islamists and Social Democrats in opinion polls.
Uzan's chief bugbear is the IMF, whose $16 billion rescue package for Turkey's economy he describes as "colonialist". He doesn't like Brussels much either.
"Do you think we'll let you swallow Turkish farmers whole, Europe?" he bellowed at a rally in rural Malatya. "No, we will not gamble with the bread and butter of this country."
Uzan's euro-scepticism may be extreme. But such ideas are widespread in Turkey, which has not forgotten attempts by the British and French in 1920 to parcel Anatolia out among Greeks, Kurds and Armenians.
A self-styled "radical nationalist", Durmus Hocaoglu, a philosophy professor, doesn't think the EU is any different. "Europe still sees Turks as barbarian invaders, not the rightful owners of this land", he says. He sees the EU's Kurdish policy as part of a deliberate plot "to divide Turkey so as to digest it more easily".
For Erdal Guven, Radikal's foreign affairs columnist, even the army, which plays a key role in shaping the Turkish establishment's foreign policy, is prey to similar doubts. Turkey's response to recent EU plans for a rapid reaction force are a case in point, he says. Ankara demanded written guarantees that the army would not be used in areas adjacent to Turkey.
"This is the logic of the absurd," says Guven. "Turkey's leaders say they want to join Europe but prove by their actions that they have no trust at all in EU motives."
What is relatively new is that, while Istanbul-based big business continues to lobby enthusiastically for Turkey's accession, scepticism has begun to infiltrate the business sector.
For Sinan Aygun, the Ankara Chamber of Commerce chairman, Turkey's decision in 1996 to agree to customs union with Europe was a disaster. "It has destroyed our markets and devastated our industry", he says.
Erol Manisali, professor of economics at Istanbul University, thinks Europe's relationship with Turkey is "a form of neo-colonialism".
"Not only does Brussels benefit from Turkey's markets for zero cost," he says, "customs union increases its control over Ankara's foreign trade policy.
"I think Europe has got Turkey exactly where it wants us," he says, "standing just outside the door."