ANKARA, Sept 24 (AFP) - Turkish commentators Friday hailed the successful end to a sudden crisis over a key reform package which had threatened to derail the country's much-coveted EU bid, but jibed at the government for failing to avert the turmoil.
"The EU door is open," trumpeted the mass-circulation Milliyet on its front page, a day after Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan assured EU officials that Ankara would adopt the penal code reform bill.
The bill, aimed at bringing Turkish justice more in line with EU criteria, is crucial to its hopes of beginning membership talks with the pan-European bloc.
"Great result," headlined the popular daily Vatan, saying Erdogan "resolved the crisis he had created himself."
The premier's Justice and Development Party (AKP) unexpectedly withdrew the reform package in mid-debate last week, apparently under pressure from radical Islamist AKP lawmakers to make adultery a punishable crime, a measure that has drawn criticism both at home and in Europe.
The move triggered stern warnings from the European Commission that failure to adopt the bill would jeopardize the country's EU drive in the run-up to an October 6 report on Turkey's progress in implementing EU standards.
After talks in Brussels on Thursday, Erdogan announced that the bill would be enacted Sunday without the adultery clause -- a major about-face from his remarks a week earlier that the EU should not meddle in Turkey's affairs.
EU enlargement chief Guenter Verheugen gave a huge boost to Ankara's hopes on Thursday when he said he saw no obstacles to a "clear recommendation" ahead of a December 17 decision by the bloc's leaders on whether to begin talks with Turkey.
"Never in its 81-year history has the Republic of Turkey found itself in such a position ... run from abroad," a columnist for the mass-circulation Hurriyet wrote.
Amid general optimism, many commentators stressed the financial and political cost of the crisis, saying it could all have been averted had the government behaved mith common sense.
"Although we are now back to the pre-crisis period in EU ties, Turkey's credibility has been damaged. It will not be easy to erase the marks this has left on political circles and public opinion in Europe," a foreign affairs columnist for the liberal daily Milliyet said.
"The AKP will also lose support at home. It will have difficulty erasing doubts (over the party's orientation), especially in liberal circles," he added.
Hurriyet described the turmoil as the latest in a series of "irrational" crises common in Turkish politics, saying it was time for the AKP to change its egocentric decision-making mechanism and focus on the country's interests instead.
It also warned that Turkey still has a long way to go to full EU membership, even if it gets the green light in December to begin accession talks, and warned that the government would fail to make any headway if it continued to clash with Europe.