ANKARA (AFP) - The Turkish parliament recessed until October 1, leaving a penal code reform vital to Turkey's European aspirations in limbo as the EU warned that failure to pass the bill by October 6 "will have an impact" on a key EU report on whether to start accession talks with Ankara.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan came under fire from the opposition and the media which hold him responsible for creating 11th-hour tensions between Ankara and Brussels with his insistance on including a clause making adultery a crime into an otherwise widely admired reform of the country's 78-year-old criminal code.
In Brussels, the European Union's Commissioner for enlargement, Guenter Verheugen, called on Ankara for "clarification" of the government's position, warning that failure to pass the bill by October 6 would "have an impact" on the report.
He said he was "strictly against" any postponement in issuing the EU report. "I don't see any reason why we should delay," he said.
Turkey's main opposition party and much of the media accused Erdogan of failing to resist pressure from nominally illegal but powerful secret religious brotherhoods that make up part of the governing Justice and Development Party's (AKP) hard-line Muslim support.
Despite its Islamist origins, the AKP calls itself simply "conservative", but there is widespread belief that the current crisis is rooted in pressure from the party's fundamentalist supporters -- what one political commentator has called its "dark side".
"It appears that the prime minister is stuck between the EU and the brotherhoods," Deniz Baykal, president of the social-democratic Republican People's Party (CHP), commented Saturday.
He appealed to Erdogan to enact the penal code before the end of the parliamentary session, but it was too late.
The house, which had been summoned to an extraordinary session to debate the bill, was automatically suspended for lack of a quorum after two roll calls until its official opening date of October 1.
This means the bill aiming to bring Turkey's criminal code up to European standards stands little chance of becoming law before October 6 -- unless parliament reconvenes in emergency session before October 1.
On Tuesday, the AKP, in the face of strong criticism from public opinion and the EU, dropped an attempt to introduce a motion making adultery a crime into the bill, a key element of Turkish efforts at improving its much-criticized human rights record.
Erdogan was out of the country on an official visit to Tajikistan when Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul, his number two, and Justice Minister Cemil Cicek struck a deal with Baykal to drop the adultery clause.
But rumors began to circulate as soon as Erdogan returned to Turkey that hardliners in the AKP wanted to reintroduce the motion.
The reform was almost complete, 343 of its 346 articles voted in record time, when, in a surprise move, the AKP on Thursday pulled the bill back from the assembly floor, effectively freezing the reform.
When Verheugen and his spokesman Jean-Christophe Filori on Friday criticized the move and warned it would reflect badly in their report to the December 17 EU summit, Erdogan lashed out.
Sharply telling the EU not to meddle with Turkey's domestic affairs, he said: "We have achieved and complied with everything concerning the Copenhagen political criteria and the Maastricht economic criteria. But let us make one thing clear: We are Turkey, we are Turks. We will make our own decisions."
Brussels seemed unimpressed, however, and Verheugen Saturday called in the Turkish envoy to the EU, Oguz Demiralp, to seek clarification of the decision to withdraw the bill.
According to the Turkish news channel NTV, Verheugen's message was clear: no penal code, no membership talks.
Turkish business leaders are "disappointed" with the government's actions, said Omer Sabanci, president of the influential Turkish Industrialists' and Businessmen's Association (TUSIAD), and expect it to show "common sense" to defuse the crisis with the EU.