Turkey's Gul says talks with EU must inevitably lead to membership

ANKARA, Oct 9 (AFP) - Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul said on Saturday long-awaited membership negotiations with the European Union must inevitably lead to Turkey joining the 25-nation bloc, even if the process is very long.
"Once the negotiations start, there's no question of stopping them and waiting," Gul told reporters in Kayseri, his hometown in central Turkey.
The European Commission, the EU's executive arm, on Wednesday recommended the start of accession talks with Ankara.
But it set tough conditions, stressed the start of talks was not a guarantee that Turkey would one day be accepted into the EU and warned that it would seek the suspension of negotiations if the country backtracked on democracy.
Gul said joining the EU would be "a very long process" but Turkey would eventually succeed in ensuring that it complied with all EU standards, Anatolia news agency reported.
On Friday evening Gul had predicted Turkey could join the EU in 2015, after a decade of negotiations.
"Turkey will be full member of the EU in 10 years," he told Turkish television channel Sky Turk.
"The train will leave in December and its final destination will be the European station," he insisted.
EU leaders are expected at a summit in Brussels on December 17 to give conditional approval to the start of membership talks with Turkey, following this week's recommendation by the commission.
Gul said on Friday evening he hoped negotiations would begin in the first half of next year, evoking a decision taken by the EU in 2002 to start membership talks with Ankara "without delay" if the December summit gave the go-ahead.
But on Thursday signs emerged that some EU countries were rethinking that pledge.
The public in several EU countries is hostile to letting the vast and relatively poor country, which has an overwhelmingly Muslim population, joining the rich-nation club.
In particular diplomats and experts said France, among others, wanted the start of talks to be delayed at least until the second half of 2005, due to fears the issue could affect the outcome of a referendum on the EU's draft constitution.
German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said in an interview to be published Monday that Turkey's membership in the EU would make Europe a safer place.
"For me the strategic and security policy argument is decisive," he told the weekly magazine Focus.
If Turkey continued with reforms with EU membership in its sights "we shall be able to stabilise the country and establish contacts between the Enlightenment culture of Europe and fundamentalist Islam," he said, to make Turkey a "beacon for the other Islamic countries."
Turkish membership would represent "more of a security gain than a risk for the EU," he said, arguing that forecasts of "waves of immigration were exaggerated."
Turkey has been seeking integration with western Europe since 1963, when it signed an association agreement with what was then the European Economic Community.