The Erdogan government must not let the escalating insurgency distract it from addressing Kurdish civilians' underlying problems.

By HUGH POPE

Turkey's activism throughout the Arab Spring and its showy challenges to Israel have gotten Ankara plenty of international attention in the last several months. But closer to home, a disturbing trend is emerging. Since June, at least 150 people have been killed and hundreds injured in an escalation of the Kurdistan Workers' Party's (PKK) long-running insurgency.

It's nothing like the worst days of the conflict in the 1990s—not yet, at least. But the downward spiral already includes familiar kidnappings, tit-for-tat clashes between the PKK and Turkish forces, terrorist bombings, Turkish attacks on PKK bases across the Iraqi border, mass detentions of Turkish Kurds and flashes of ethnic strife between Turkish and Kurdish civilians in major cities.

The escalation is even more significant given that Turks and Kurds have come closer than ever to peace over the past two years. But Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been reluctant to spend enough of his enormous domestic political capital to tackle some of the underlying problems of his 15% Kurdish community. He has allowed a hardening of Turkish anti-terror laws, which have put 3,000 Kurd activists behind bars—not for any violent acts, but because they happen to share the nationalist goals of the PKK. He has not relaxed the ban on Kurds learning their mother tongue at primary and secondary school. Just as importantly, Mr. Erdogan has only briefly attempted to reeducate the Turkish-majority public, whose views have been distorted by a near-century of nationalist education and, in the past, anti-Kurd propaganda.

Europe will lose credibility as a global power unless it overcomes its fears of Turkey's entry into the 27-member European Union, the head of a commission of elder statesmen studying the explosive issue said here Wednesday.

Former Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari, winner of the 2008 Nobel Peace Prize, said Turkey could be a crucial western ally in the Muslim world as the West tackles issues ranging from the Afghanistan conflict and the Middle East peace process to Iran's nuclear ambitions and Europe's energy security.

But he said Europe, influenced by French President Nicolas Sarkozy's adamant declaration that Turkey's values are incompatible with Europe's and that it should never be allowed in the EU, will lose stature in the world if it continues to foot-drag on its 1999 promise to treat Turkey's application fairly.

"If we don't honour the agreements that we make. I wouldn't trust anything that Europe does," Ahtisaari said at a public meeting organized by a French think-tank.

"If we can't get our own house in order, how can we play a role in the world?"

He said Europe needs "political leaders with values" and a willingness to show leadership.

It was a clear shot at European politicians like Sarkozy and Germany's Angela Merkel, who have tried to score political points by allying themselves with the European public's "fears of Islam" and a possible wave of job-seeking Muslim migrants taking advantage of the EU's worker mobility rights.

"I don't know what's wrong with our self-confidence," Ahtisaari, who became a Nobel laureate for his work as a United Nations peace envoy in Iraq, Kosovo, Indonesia and Namibia, said in a brief interview with Canwest News Service.

The European public's fears were reflected Wednesday in a new poll released by the German Marshall Fund and Compagnia di San Paolo, an Italian foundation.

Opposition to Turkey's membership in the EU grew in nine of 11 European countries surveyed in the poll, with France leading the way with 48 per cent against Turkey's inclusion.

Thirty-two per cent of Europeans surveyed viewed Turkey's entry negatively, up from 28 per cent last year, while 20 per cent favoured the idea, down from 21 per cent last year.

Turkey's entry process has been officially stalled since 2006 due largely to its decades-long clash with Greece over the status of Cyprus, an EU member state with a Greek-speaking majority and Turkish minority.

Ahtisaari's commission, which includes former French Socialist prime minister Michel Rocard, said in its report that Turkey has made huge strides in meeting the EU's reform demands since 2000.

Turkey enacted international human rights laws, ended the death penalty, reformed its prison system, increased protection for women's rights, weakened the role of the military, ended restrictions on freedom of expression, brought in new protections against torture, and improved the rights of the Kurdish minority.

But the report said efforts to remove other aspects of Turkey's "authoritarian legacies" have stalled, in part due to the public backlash against comments by Sarkozy and other European leaders that suggested EU membership was not open to Muslim countries.

Turkey bears a responsibility to continue with reforms, such as "ending the practice of lengthy public political speeches by senior generals" and dealing with the Cyprus question, the commissioners advised.

But European leaders must also show leadership by reaching out to a country that is already an important member of other western alliances, including the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and is an important western ally in the Muslim world.

"The impressive progress Turkey has made in all fields over the last 10 years was clearly linked to the country's EU candidate status and the accession process," the report concluded.

"To ensure a continuation of Turkey's transformation its European perspective must be preserved."