Less than a third of Turks think Turkey must enter the European Union, a poll showed on Tuesday, the latest sign of waning support for membership as Ankara faces increasing pressure from Brussels, REUTERS REPORTED. The survey, carried out by pollsters A&G and published in newspaper Milliyet, showed 32.2 percent thought Turkey "must certainly enter the EU", a sharp decline on last year's 57.4 percent and 67.5 percent in 2004. The poll, which shows a more dramatic decline in EU support than other recent surveys, comes as Brussels urges Turkey to step up reforms and make concessions over the divided Mediterranean island of Cyprus if it is to avoid a possible freeze in membership talks later this year. The poll results could make it harder for Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, who faces a general election in November 2007, to push through unpopular measures demanded by the EU. Of the 2,408 people polled, 25.6 percent said Turkey "should certainly not enter the EU", more than twice the 10.3 percent who felt that way last year, when Turkey began entry talks. The survey was carried out in late September, and since then nationalism and anti-EU feeling has been fuelled further by a law passed in the French parliament making it a crime to deny -- as Ankara does -- that Ottoman Turks carried out a genocide against Armenians in 1915. The poll also showed that 76.5 percent of Turks expect tougher conditions to be imposed on them in the future and only 7.2 percent trust the EU. Many Turks, including the government, complain that Brussels is changing the rules as it goes along over Cyprus. The EU is due to present a report on Turkey's progress on Nov. 8, which will likely criticise Ankara for a lack of reform on issues such as minority and religious rights, and freedom of speech after nationalist prosecutors have continued to take journalists and writers to court over insulting "Turkishness".
