The EU will have 10 new members for sure, but an 11th is still knocking on the door. Denis Staunton reports on the background to Turkish/EU relations
When EU leaders meet in Copenhagen this evening, one of the first items on their agenda is a question that inspires more passion than almost any other facing the EU - what to do about Turkey.
The Turkish leader, Mr Tayyip Erdogan, said yesterday he expects the summit to set a date for the start of his country's negotiations to join the EU.
"This summit will not finish without giving a powerful country like Turkey a date to begin negotiations," he said.
President Bush telephoned Denmark's Prime Minister Mr Anders Fogh Rasmussen to press Turkey's case.
And a majority of member-states back a Franco-German proposal to let Ankara start negotiations in 2005 on condition that it continues to improve human rights.
But many Europeans, including the Commission President, Mr Romano Prodi, and the President of the Convention on the Future of Europe, Mr Valery Giscard d'Estaing, fear that inviting Turkey to join could be a fateful mistake. Mr Giscard has gone so far as to warn that admitting Turkey would spell the end of the EU.
Mr Giscard's objection to Turkish membership rests partly on the fact that most of Turkey's land mass lies outside Europe. But he is also worried that Turkey's overwhelmingly Muslim population could threaten European identity and that Ankara's democratic tradition is far too fragile.
Mr Giscard was saying publicly what a number of EU leaders mutter in private. But instead of smoking out fellow doubters, his intervention has served to create a backlash, making the question of Turkey's relationship with the EU a test of the Union's inclusiveness.
Turkey has been knocking on Europe's door for more than 40 years and Ankara signed an association agreement with the Common Market as long ago as 1963.
The breakthrough came in Helsinki in 1999 when, under massive pressure from Washington, the EU agreed to include Turkey in its list of 13 candidates for membership.
Ankara has received little encouragement since then, however, and some Turkish analysts believe that the EU has been playing a cynical game. Writing in the German paper Die Zeit this week, Prof Hasan Unal, professor of International Relations at Ankara's Bilkent University, suggested that a clear rejection of Turkey's membership aspirations would be better than another ambiguous signal.
"The EU should make its mind up and say either yes or no. But yes should mean yes. At the moment, a no would be better than a yes that really means no. Because a dubious yes could create more trouble than progress between Ankara and Brussels," he wrote.
The EU needs Turkey's co-operation in solving the Cyprus conflict and in ending a dispute over access for the EU's Rapid Reaction Force to NATO equipment. Washington is eager that Ankara, a key military ally, should be brought within the European family as soon as possible.
But doubts remain about Turkey's commitment to democratic values, despite the fact that Ankara this year abolished the death penalty and introduced civil rights for minorities.
Turkey's supporters argue that there is no risk involved in setting a date for the start of negotiations because, if Turkey fails to meet the EU's democratic criteria, it cannot join the Union.
Opponents of Turkey's membership claim that the main difficulty is not that Turkey is Muslim but that it is simply to big and too poor to be accommodated in the EU.
But failure to set a date in Copenhagen will convince many Turks that the EU is a Christian club that has been pleased to use Ankara to solve its problems but offers little in return.
Such a message would not only strengthen anti-European feeling in Turkey but would be felt as a slap in the face throughout the Muslim world.
