September 21, 2007	Friday	Ramazan 08, 1428

ANKARA: Turkey’s ruling AK Party, boosted by a big election win in July, has vowed to speed up plans to join the European Union, but its reluctance to push key reforms may put it on a collision course with Brussels.

The EU says Turkey must tackle article 301 of its penal code that makes it a crime to insult Turkish national identity and state institutions.

But Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan’s government has instead made clear its top priority is to overhaul Turkey’s military-inspired constitution, even if this means a negative annual progress report from the European Commission in November.

“We are not making our reforms to please Europeans and we will continue to do what is right for Turkey to bring more democracy, prosperity and better living standards,” AK Party deputy leader Egemen Bagis said.

Jean-Christophe Filori, head of the Turkey desk in the European Commission’s enlargement section, said he was concerned that constitutional reform, though welcome, was becoming a substitute for progress in other pressing areas.

“A constitution takes a long time. The Turkish penal code and the (religious) foundations law can be addressed today. The constitutional process shouldn’t become the receptacle for all the reforms needed today,” Filori told a gathering at the European Parliament last week.

Turkey’s parliament, in recess until Oct 1, could still approve the foundations law before November, but in its current form it falls well short of EU demands concerning restoration of property to the country’s minority Christian community.

Among other demands, Brussels wants Turkey to open its ports to traffic from Cyprus, a country Ankara does not recognise. It also wants Ankara to open its border with Armenia and to reopen a seminary near Istanbul seen as vital to the long-term survival of Turkey’s tiny Greek Orthodox Christian community.

But analysts expect no movement on these sensitive issues, just slow progress on more technical aspects of the EU talks.

Turkey and its defenders say it has plenty of time to meet EU standards because it is not seen joining for many years.

Orhan Kemal Cengiz, head of the Human Rights Agenda Association, said government plans to change the constitution, though worthy, would sap the energy it is able to devote to tackling continued rights abuses such as torture.

The constitutional discussions have already ignited a row between the Islamist-rooted AK Party (AKP) and Turkey’s powerful secular elite over whether to lift a ban on the Muslim headscarf in universities. Secularists suspect the government of trying to erode the separation of state and religion, a claim it denies.

The AK Party-dominated parliament elected Gul head of state in August.

Underlying the AK Party’s cooler stance on the EU is a growing belief that the bloc will never admit Muslim Turkey.

The leaders of France and Germany say Turkey has no place in the EU. Brussels has also failed to lift trade restrictions against Turkish Cypriots, while the internationally recognised Greek Cypriot government threatens to block Turkey’s EU bid.—Reuters