ekathimerini.com | S/E Europe

Hundreds of conservative Turks, waving their national flag, gathered during an anti-government demonstration in Izmir on June 21 to protest government policies. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan faces tough challenges at home, as well as in the European court.

ANKARA – Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan will start a difficult visit to Brussels today, trying to revive a European Union entry bid that is facing new signs of hostility from some member states.

Erdogan’s second trip this year to EU headquarters comes with membership talks almost at a standstill, raising doubts over whether Turkey’s decades-old dream is attainable.

The success of some conservative parties opposed to Turkey in this month’s European Parliament election, in which EU “enlargement fatigue” and hostility to Ankara became a campaign issue in some countries, has dealt a blow to its hopes.

Reforms long demanded by the EU, such as reforming the military-inspired constitution, have fallen prey to Turkey’s chronic political infighting.

Further darkening the mood is an alleged plot by the Turkish army to undermine Erdogan’s Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP). If proved authentic, it would confirm critics’ fears the “old Turkey” of generals meddling in politics has not been banished to the past.

“We are getting very close to a crunch,” said Amanda Akcakoca, an analyst at the European Policy Center in Brussels. “Turkey needs to think out of the box and do something unexpected to impress Europe.”

Any sign that Turkey is throwing in the towel on its EU campaign, an anchor for political and financial reform in a country prone to instability, would have negative consequences for investors and would unsettle markets.

The EU unanimously agreed in 2005 to open accession talks with Turkey, a large, relatively poor Muslim country of 70 million people, but since then reforms have slowed to a halt and the bloc appears divided about accepting Turkey. Leaders in France and Germany have revived calls to offer Ankara a “privileged partnership” rather than full membership.

Adding to a sense that time is running out, the European Commission, which has frozen eight out of 35 chapters (negotiating areas) over the Cyprus dispute, will review in December Ankara’s promise to open its ports to Cypriot vessels.

Pro-Turkey Sweden has said it might not be possible to open new chapters during its six-month EU presidency starting July 1, raising the specter of a standstill in talks.

Erdogan, who will be accompanied by Turkey’s EU negotiator Egemen Bagis in his visit today and tomorrow, told EU ambassadors this week he is committed to EU reforms, but he will need more than words to convince his European audience.

“The days when Turkey could say it was committed to reforms aimed at joining the EU and would win applause in Brussels are becoming fewer and fewer,” said Hugh Pope, analyst for the International Crisis Group and an author on books about Turkey. “I don’t think we are on a train crash course but in a cyclical low point. Turkey needs to address a credibility gap.” Turkey has so far opened 10 out of 35 negotiating chapters and hopes to start a new one this week on taxation.

The EU wants Ankara to reform its constitution, improve free speech, grant more rights to minorities and curb the power of the army, which has a long history of intervening in government.

A newspaper report this month that the army had drawn up a plan to stop the AKP and an influential religious movement from “destroying Turkey’s secular order and replacing it with an Islamist state” has sparked a political storm at home.

Erdogan told EU ambassadors this week Turkey had entered “an irreversible path toward democracy and rule of law,” but the report has raised concerns in Europe.

Turk military says controversial report was fabricated

ANKARA (AFP) – A purported army document outlining a plan to weaken Turkey’s Islamist-rooted government is a forgery, military prosecutors said yesterday. It is now up to civilian justice to investigate “who fabricated the document and for what reasons... and whether their objective was to tarnish the Turkish Armed Forces,” the statement, carried by the Anatolia news agency, said.

The document, published in the Taraf daily earlier this month, caused political jitters in Ankara, where relations between the staunchly secularist military and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government have been frosty. Taraf, which often targets the army, said the plan aimed “to break popular support” for the Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the powerful brotherhood of Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen on the ground that they undermined the secular system. Yesterday’s statement said the document was a copy, the original of which was not available, and bore the real signature of a colonel.

Taraf said the alleged plan envisaged a series of actions, mostly media propaganda, to discredit Erdogan’s AKP and create divisions among its members.

The paper is said to have been seized from a former army officer, now among the suspects in a controversial probe against a secularist-nationalist network accused of a plot to prompt a military coup against the AKP.