ANKARA: Turkey says its EU entry bid will be the priority in 2008, but moves to end a Muslim headscarf ban and change the constitution could get in the way of implementing reforms to satisfy the European Union.

President Abdullah Gul said this week that domestic matters, including parliamentary and presidential elections, had consumed Turkey’s political energy in 2007.

“Year 2008 will be the year of the European Union ... I will closely follow the government’s actions,” he said.

But Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan’s focus on rewriting the constitution and ending a headscarf ban could reignite tensions with the secular elite, which includes judges and army generals, and distract the government from its EU bid.

“I see no sense of urgency in the government on EU reforms ... They seem more focused on trying to please their grassroots supporters on the headscarf issue,” said Semih Idiz, a columnist with the liberal Milliyet daily newspaper.

Erdogan’s centre-right AK Party has Islamist roots, but it denies it wants to boost the role of religion.Ayse Ayata, a professor at Ankara’s Middle East Technical University, also doubted the government’s appetite for reform.

“I am not optimistic about the pace of EU reforms. I think they’ll do just enough to keep the process alive,” she said.

“The government was re-elected six months ago with a big majority. They have all the levers of power and no excuses not to act. But so far they have done nothing.”

Ankara says its desire to join the EU is undiminished and points to the opening of talks on several of the 35 policy areas it must complete before joining the 27-member bloc.

The litmus test of Turkey’s EU commitment is article 301 of the penal code that makes it a crime to insult “Turkishness”.

Dozens of writers and scholars have been prosecuted under the article and the EU insists it be amended or scrapped.

After years of prevarication, the government says it is close to agreeing an amended text. The amended article is expected to substitute “Turkish people” for the vaguer “Turkishness” and to make it more difficult to launch cases.

But even Gul has conceded that there are other articles in the penal code that could still be used to stifle free speech.

He said the real problem lay in the mentality of a conservative judiciary educated to put state interests above the individual.

Parliament is expected to approve soon a law on religious foundations vetoed by the previous president, but it does not meet EU demands on the restoration of property to Turkey’s minority Christian community.

The government is also reluctant to grant more cultural rights to Turkey’s large ethnic Kurdish community because of strong Turkish nationalist opposition in parliament and the difficult security situation in the mainly Kurdish southeast.

Ankara, with tacit US and EU support, has begun bombing PKK Kurdish separatist rebel targets in nearby northern Iraq after a series of deadly guerrilla attacks on security forces that helped feed an upsurge in Turkish nationalism.

Nationalist fears are also blamed for a series of recent attacks on Christians, seen by some Turks as bent on undermining national unity. On Saturday, Turks mark the first anniversary of the killing of editor Hrant Dink, a prominent member of Turkey’s Armenian Christian minority, by an ultra-nationalist gunman.

“The government’s inertia on the EU reform front helps fan the nationalism in the country,” said Wolfango Piccoli of Eurasia Group, a London-based political risk consultancy.

Piccoli also said the plans for a new constitution aimed at bringing Turkey more into line with EU democratic norms risked reviving last year’s damaging battles over the role of religion.

Turkey’s secular elite fears the plan to ease restrictions on religious symbols such as the headscarf threatens separation of state and religion.

Turkey’s EU woes are by no means confined to the home front.

Ankara needs to show progress in opening its ports to traffic from Cyprus, an EU member. But it is reluctant to move before the EU lifts trade restrictions against breakaway Turkish Cypriots in the north of the Mediterranean island.

Turkey’s task will be complicated if Cypriot President Tassos Papadopoulos is re-elected next month. He is viewed in Ankara as anti-Turkish and anti-Turkish Cypriot.

Worryingly for Ankara, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, an opponent of Turkey’s quest for EU membership, takes over the bloc’s rotating presidency in the second half of 2008.

Sarkozy says the EU cannot absorb Turkey, a relatively poor Muslim country with 75 million people, and says Brussels should instead negotiate a “privileged partnership”.

Erdogan will meet Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who is also sceptical about Turkey’s accession drive, in May. This week, he said he would make clear to them Ankara would not accept a “privileged partnership” with the EU.

“If Turkey is accepted into the EU, then we are accepted. If not, we are not. But anything between the two is unacceptable. Sarkozy and Merkel must understand this,” Erdogan said.—Reuters