BERLIN (AFP) - Turkey was expected to insist on the unconditional backing of European Union powerhouses Germany and France for its bid to join the bloc at three-way talks, amid signs Paris is hedging its bets.
Following a one-day summit between Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, French President Jacques Chirac and Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin, the leaders were to welcome Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Erdogan warned before leaving for Berlin that his poor, predominantly Muslim country would settle for nothing short of full membership in the EU, regardless of efforts within the bloc to slow the process.
"This summit... is very important with respect to our foreign policy objectives because Turkey's European Union accession process has ceased to be an ambiguous process for the EU and has taken an irreversible direction," Erdogan said in a speech before the parliamentary group of his Justice and Development Party.
Schroeder is a strong supporter of Turkey's bid, while Chirac has bowed to domestic pressure for a referendum on Ankara's accession and warned that Paris could veto membership talks at any time.
Erdogan urged France not to exploit Turkey's bid to join the EU for domestic political ends in a speech Thursday at the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
"What we have been trying to explain for months, above all else, is that holding a referendum (in an EU country) is not among the criteria for adhesion to the EU," he said.
"For years we have been present in other international organizations alongside France. Why not the EU? That is what I want them to think about."
Germany, which with nearly 2.5 million people has the largest Turkish immigrant population in Western Europe, sees Ankara's accession primarily as a security issue.
In an interview broadcast on BBC radio last week, Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer said the modernization process necessary for the secular Muslim state to join the EU "would be almost a D-Day in the war against terror".
"It would be the greatest positive challenge for these totalitarian and terrorist ideas," he said.
Fischer warned of a backlash if the EU put off embracing Turkey, which is a member of NATO, pointing to its central position between Europe and the Middle East in light of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.
"Europe made promises to Turkey since 1963," he said. "So after 40 years of promises ... it would have very negative consequences."
An EU report earlier this month declaring the country fit to start membership talks set off the current round of debate on Turkey's future within Europe.
The 25 EU leaders are expected to make a final decision on Ankara's accession talks at a summit on December 17 in what must be a unanimous vote, but it is not yet clear when the negotiations could start.
Turkey has said it wants the talks to start in early 2005.
But signals have begun to emerge that some EU members, including France, want the talks postponed at least into the second half of next year, fearing a negative impact on a planned referendum on the EU constitution.
The official reason for Erdogan's invitation to join the Franco-German summit is for the signing of a 2.8-billion-dollar (2.22-billion-euro) contract for Turkish Airlines to buy 36 Airbus passenger jets.
Apart from Turkey, the summit will see French and German leaders discuss a reform of the Lisbon Strategy, the EU's ten-year plan to become the world's largest economy, which began with a meeting late Monday between German Economy Minister Wolfgang Clement and his French counterpart Nicolas Sarkozy.
The summit was also to see the adoption of joint measures to boost the learning of the French language in Germany and of German in France.
10/26/2004 - 11:21 GMT - AFP