MADRID: If France votes “No” to the European Union’s constitution next Sunday, Turkey worries that it could be one of the first victims. Just five months after winning a historic date for the start of membership talks with the wealthy 25-nation bloc, Turkish officials have been dismayed to see their candidacy become a key focus of the “No” campaigns in French and Dutch referendums.

“Turks are very much complaining about the way Turkey is at the centre of discussions in France,” Mehmet Dulger, chairman of the Turkish parliament’s foreign affairs committee, told a conference on Turkey’s road to Europe in Madrid last week.

He voiced a concern government leaders officially dismiss — that a French rejection of the constitutional treaty could put the brakes on further EU enlargement “and maybe they’d postpone negotiations with Turkey”.

The candidacy of the sprawling, poor, mainly Muslim nation on the hinge of Europe and the Middle East, with a fast growing population of 70 million, has crystallised public fears about immigration, low-cost competition and loss of identity and power in western Europe.

Even supporters of the constitution such as the charismatic leader of France’s governing UMP party and presidential hopeful, Nicolas Sarkozy, have coupled their plea for a “Yes” with opposition to Turkish EU entry, Dulger lamented.

Turkish anxiety about being rejected along with the treaty may help explain a mood of mutual disenchantment between Ankara and Brussels since EU leaders decided last December — with some conditions — to open accession negotiations on Oct. 3.

“Dec 17 turned out to be an anticlimax and it’s a serious problem. 2005 is a very difficult year for Turkey,” said Soli Ozel of Istanbul Bilgi University. Angered by EU pressure over Cyprus, minority rights and police brutality, Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan has gone as far as to suggest the EU wants to harm Turkey and is playing with forces that seek to break up his country.

“For the last four months, the government did not seem to have its heart on the EU agenda,” Ozel told the conference, organised by the Barcelona-based European Institute for the Mediterranean (IEMed).

Brussels officials complain privately of a stalling of Turkey’s reform momentum and a revival of nationalist rhetoric. Economy Minister Ali Babacan denied there was any slowdown in Turkey’s drive to transform itself along EU lines, but he acknowledged the government was doing better at embedding pro-European economic reform than political liberalisation.

“Political reforms, unlike economic reforms, do need some adjustment time to change the mental framework of the people,” he said. “External ... peer pressure will help us go down the right track.”

In a Reuters interview, Babacan said Turkey had nothing to fear from the French referendum provided it stayed calm, pursued its own reform agenda and met EU conditions for starting talks. These are the signing of a protocol to adapt its EU customs union to the bloc’s 10 new members and the entry into force of reforms already enacted.

Some financial market analysts are forecasting investor flight from Turkish assets if France votes “No” to the constitution, on fears of a delay in Ankara’s accession bid.

But Babacan said he had “no solid reason” to think the Oct. 3 date would be in jeopardy. Turkish accession was a decade away and the Europeans could not go on debating every day for 10 years whether Turkey should be a member, he argued.

Even those Europeans who opposed Turkish entry had a clear interest in Turkey adopting European standards and becoming as stable and prosperous as possible, he said.

Turkey’s European friends urged it to counter any fallout from the French and Dutch referendums by giving a new, visible momentum to political and legal reform.

Sir David Logan, a former British ambassador to Ankara, said a new Turkish road map for reform measures would help forestall complications in the run-up to Oct. 3. Britain, a key supporter of Turkey’s candidacy, will use its EU presidency from July 1 to try to smooth the start of negotiations.—Reuters