BRUSSELS (AFP) - Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan held potentially crunch talks with EU officials, seeking to allay concerns about Ankara's EU preparations two weeks ahead of a crucial report.
EU enlargement commissioner Guenter Verheugen, who is due to publish its assessment of Turkey's EU bid on October 6, said nothing as he arrived for the talks with Erdogan at a Brussels hotel.
The European Commission, wants clarification from Erdogan on his vast mostly Muslim country's reform plans, clouded by uncertainty over the fate of key proposals.
Verheugen has made it clear that Turkey's fate could depend on reform of its penal code.
"We would like to know what will happen now in Turkey ... at what speed the reform process .. will go forward," said Verheugen's spokesman on the eve of the visit, adding it "will, I hope, allow us to clarify the situation."
Erdogan, who arrived in Brussels late Wednesday, was also to meet European Commission chief Romano Prodi during the trip. Later he will also meet European Parliament party leaders.
Along with his report, Verheugen is to make recommendations next month about whether Turkey should start EU membership negotiations. The final word will then be taken by EU leaders at a summit in mid-December.
Turkey, an EU candidate since 1999, has been striving hard to win a positive appraisal from the commission by pushing through major reforms to its laws, judiciary and systems of government.
But Brussels has warned that the hard work risks being undone at the final hurdle if promised reforms to Turkey's penal code are not carried through.
Erdogan's Islamist-rooted government last week dramatically withdrew the penal code bill from parliament -- apparently under pressure from hardline Muslim groups to restore a clause to criminalise adultery.
Filori delivered a blunt warning this week that Turkey would be snubbed by the EU unless it passes the penal code reforms.
Temperatures have risen sharply in recent weeks over whether the EU should put out the welcome mat for Turkey, a populous, Muslim-majority country viewed with suspicion by some as insufficiently "European".
EU agriculture commissioner Franz Fischler, a known opponent of Turkey's accession, said Tuesday that its entry into the bloc would open up a swathe of problems for the bloc's farm policies.
Earlier this month it emerged that the Austrian official had warned, in a letter to his fellow EU commissioners, that "there remain doubts as to Turkey's long-term secular and democratic credentials".
Erdogan arrived in Brussels late Wednesday accompanied by his justice minister, Cemil Cicek, but did not make any comments to reporters waiting at his hotel.
European Commission chief-in-waiting Jose Manuel Durao Barroso said Wednesday that Turkey has yet to meet the criteria for joining the 25-member European Union.
The current issue is whether Turkey is ready to start EU accession talks. Most observers expect that, even once it has been given the green light, Ankara will be unlikely to join the bloc for at least a decade.
"We think that Turkey has made progress, but at the present time it does not yet fully meet the criteria for adhesion to the European Union," he said after talks with French President Jacques Chirac in Paris.
Barroso will take over from Prodi in November, when the current EU executive stands down.