LONDON: Today, as in the past, Turkey embodies transcendent political questions. Can west and east live in harmony? How can secular and religious values best coexist? Are minorities and human rights properly respected? This week Pope Benedict trod a more exemplary path through these difficult issues than some had expected. Now the European Union must do the same if it is to avoid becoming a protectionist irrelevance and, perhaps, if it is to survive at all.

In spite of all its problems, the mutual embrace between the west and Turkey is a great project of civilisation and law. Yet events are pushing both sides towards an epochal confrontation at this month's EU summit. We are a mere two weeks away from an existential explosion which could end with Europe defining itself as a place in which Muslims are not welcome, and with modern Turkey turning away from the westernising path that has been fundamental to its whole existence. We would be crazy to allow either thing to happen.

It is futile to deny that Turkey is in its own distinct but deep sense a part of Europe. Like Britain it is a nation of the periphery, but there is no European network of importance -- from the Champions League and the Eurovision Song Contest to Nato and the Council of Europe -- of which Turkey is not a part. The sole exception is the EU.

Turkey first applied for associate membership as long ago as 1959. It has been an associate since 1963. It asked for full membership in 1987. Accession negotiations finally began in 2005. Even optimists think it unlikely Turkey will join the EU before 2015, and then only with significant transitional arrangements. So what is this latest crisis really about? Turkey has been consistent, patient and obliging in its pro-European policy. Yet since 1959 it has been leapfrogged by 21 new member states -- and may yet be beaten to membership by five others from the Balkans (two of which have large Muslim populations). If Europe now spurns Turkey, it will deservedly stand accused of historic dishonesty and perfidy.

None of this is to deny the challenges. Turkey would be physically the largest nation in the EU (it is more than twice the size of Germany). Its membership would propel the union's borders from the Danube almost to the Euphrates. Within a few years, Turkey would have more people than any other EU member. Yet Turks would be among the poorest and least skilled EU citizens. In the UN development project's human development index, Turkey ranks 92nd, well below every other European nation, including Albania. Corruption remains a nationwide blight. Measured in this way, Turkey is more a Middle Eastern nation than a European one.

Nor can we dismiss Turkey's mistreatment of minorities and abuses of human rights. It is in denial about Armenia, has fought a brutal war against the Kurds and remains reluctant to acknowledge its Greek and Orthodox traditions. Last year it put the most famous Turk of our era, the Nobel prize winner Orhan Pamuk, on trial merely for criticising the taboo on discussing these events. Ten days ago the Gazi University professor Atilla Yayla was dismissed for questioning the cult of Kemal Ataturk. This week Turkey's ardently Kemalist president, Ahmet Necdet Sezer, vetoed a new religious freedom law.

Yet Turkey is unquestionably changing. The economy has grown by a third in the past five years. Growth this year is at 8 per cent. Urbanisation is rapid, especially in Anatolia, parts of which have gone from being like Kosovo to being like Ireland in under a generation. In October the OECD praised Turkey for adopting far-reaching structural reforms. The prospect of EU membership has been a catalyst for reform across Turkish governance. Under the prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan -- who owes his power in large part to the emerging Anatolian middle class -- Turkey has taken what the BBC correspondent Chris Morris describes as its great leap forward. In 2004, an independent commission under Martti Ahtisaari, of the UN, concluded that reform was being carried through with "unprecedented determination and efficiency". Ahtisaari spoke of a "silent revolution". Under Erdogan modern Turkey is one of the healthier men of Europe.

It may seem incredible that this sweeping transformation and radical possibility are held hostage by the Greek Cypriot regime in Nicosia, which uses its veto to block almost all aspects of Turkish EU entry. Yet on one level that is why Turkey's bid may founder in Brussels in two weeks. Granted, Turkey is not without blame for the impasse -- it could call Nicosia's bluff. And its pace of reform has slowed since the disastrous decision to admit Nicosia to the EU in 2004 without a solution of the Cyprus conflict. Even so, common sense says something more important is in play here.

That something is political and public opinion in the many parts of the EU that oppose Turkish membership, yet prefer to hide behind the Cyprus dispute. Public opinion is against Turkish entry in 15 of the EU's 25 states. In Austria, still affecting to be traumatised by the siege of Vienna in 1683 and where a referendum has been promised, opinion is six-to-one against. In France, where there will also be a vote, opponents lead by 15 per cent. The real problem about any coming together, in other words, does not lie in Turkey but in the EU.

The west has always been prejudiced against the Turks, said Ataturk, adding that the Turks have always moved towards the west. Perhaps the imminent danger to the Turkish bid is merely another swing in a ceaseless cycle. Yet we must be clear what message the derailing of the talks would send and what the consequences would be. As the newly published Cambridge history of the later Ottoman Empire reminds us, the defeat of 1683 cost the grand vizier his life and the sultan his throne. Having staked so much on Europe, the Erdogan government would risk being swept aside by resurgent Kemalism or resurgent Islamism, or perhaps both. At best, Turkish reformers would fall victim to the melancholy huzun of which Pamuk writes. At worst the country could become fratricidally ungovernable and might look to Iran or Russia for support.

The cost on the wider stage might even be greater. The impact in the Muslim world -- and among Europe's own Muslims -- of Europe's symbolic renunciation of tolerance and pluralism is hard to quantify. But we can be sure of one thing: Al Qaeda would be laughing all the way to the terrorist training camp. —Dawn/Guardian News Service