TURKEY: Talks between Turkey and the EU over entry to the world's biggest trading bloc headed for collapse last night after Cyprus torpedoed a deal to kick-start the stalled negotiations.
After signing up for a late-night compromise on Thursday designed to allow formal accession talks with Turkey's foreign minister, Abdullah Gul, to go ahead on Monday, Cyprus unpicked the agreement on the least contentious issue of science and research - the first of 35 negotiating "chapters".
Mr Gul - who is due to be warned that Turkey's reform programme is unacceptably frozen, with renewed threats to his country's stability, support for human rights and religious freedom and judicial independence - has already suggested he could stay away or the talks be suspended. EU foreign ministers will try to resolve the problem on Monday.
Turkey began accession talks on October 3rd, 2005, with a view to becoming the EU's first Muslim member by the middle of the next decade. But the talks have been repeatedly held up by the refusal of the Islamist AKP (justice and development) government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan to recognise the Republic of Cyprus - or at least honour an agreement to give it access to a customs union with the EU.
Ali Babacan, Turkey's chief negotiator, warned this week that the country should expect delays in its attempt to join the EU and talks on the second "chapter", education and culture, could also be postponed.
"The Turkish economy is resilient to all kinds of developments at home and abroad but everyone should be ready for occasional slippages and problems with the EU," the country's economy minister said. But the economy, a "rising star" under Mr Erdogan since the collapse of 2001, has been in free fall in recent weeks.
The Erdogan government has also come under sustained onslaught, both at home and in the EU, for its alleged failure to act over a suspected ultra-nationalist gang said to be behind the assassination of a judge whose court had upheld the ban on women wearing the Islamic headscarf in public offices, including schools and universities.
With daily fatal clashes between Kurdish rebels and the armed forces in the deprived southeast of the country, the chief of staff has also come under attack for urging his fellow citizens to demonstrate against the government over the erosion of the secular state, prompting EU fears over civilian control of the military.
Business leaders have called on the prime minister to drop religious issues and reboot the reform programme. Several have voiced concerns that the lack of progress in accession talks could spell the end of Turkey's European ambitions. - (Guardian service)