"TURKEY: Raising the Bar Again
Could turkey become the true victim of the twin ''no' votes on the EU constitution in France and Holland? Ankara is due to start formal EU negotiations in October. But many European politicians are interpreting the referendums as a vote against further enlargement. ''Turkey will take the blame for the two 'no' votes," says Daniel Hannan, a British member of the European Parliament. Last week EU Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso emphasized that negotiations would be ''open ended"—in other words, not automatically leading to membership. And Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn said Turkey would face the ''most rigorous" test of any EU candidate thus far. In practice, that surely means Ankara will be judged not just on promises of reform, but implementation. Several laws passed at Brussels' insistence—for example, freedom-of-speech reforms allowing the use of the Kurdish language in schools and in the media—are now on the statute books but are widely ignored."
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