Britain to support Turkey on date for EU application talks

Britain will use all its influence to ensure a date is agreed next week for Turkey to start negotiations on membership of the European Union, the Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, promised the country's new political leader, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, last night.

Mr Straw urged Mr Erdogan to secure parliamentary ratification for a new raft of human rights reforms – approved by the Turkish cabinet yesterday – in time for the EU summit in Copenhagen, on Thursday and Friday next week, which will consider Turkish candidacy.

But Mr Straw went his furthest yet in making clear that Britain would be taking a lead in seeking to secure a firm date for negotiations to start. He went out of his way to praise Turkey for the "significant progress" it has made on human rights.

Turkey is widely criticised for its record of torture in prisons and other abuses, but last year it introduced 34 measures to improve human rights, followed by another 14 in August, including the abolition of the death penalty. Yesterday the cabinet approved a 36-point package aimed at meeting EU criteria for entry.

Mr Straw, who signed a joint UK-Turkey action plan to help Ankara fulfil EU entry criteria, said: "The point I keep making to my colleagues in Europe is that they have got to think strategically, as Mr Erdogan is doing, about the best future for this very large country on our eastern flanks.

"Ultimately, the future of Turkey is in the hands of the Turkish people but we can be a force in securing a good future for it."

Turkey will dominate much of the Copenhagen summit because its support is pivotal in two areas. Ankara can help secure an agreement between Nato and the EU on pooling command and control assets for Europe's security and defence policy – and, more crucial still, its support is needed for reaching political agreement on the UN-brokered plan for the future of Cyprus.

Britain and the US – which wants an early start to EU negotiations for Turkey as part of its efforts to secure Ankara's support for possible war in Iraq – are hoping for agreement on Cyprus, Nato and EU membership, which are heavily interdependent.

In talks with Mr Straw yesterday Mr Erdogan appeared to be warming rapidly to the UN plan for Cyprus which would make the Greek and Turkish sectors autonomous within a light federal structure. But negotiations involving the Greek and Turkish Cypriots are expected to continue right up to the deadline at the end of next week.

One key human rights measure EU leaders are hoping Mr Erdogan will have pushed through before the summit is a retrial of five Kurdish politicians who were expelled from parliament in 1995 and jailed for 15 years after what is widely regarded as a mistrial.

Mr Straw insisted he was "not in the least complacent'' about Turkish human rights records but added: "Human rights have not always been perfect either in applicant states or in the past in a number of existing EU states.''

Supporters of Turkish EU entry believe that the negotiating process is the best guarantee that its new government will persist with far-reaching human rights reforms.

In London on Monday Paul Wolfowitz, the US Deputy Defence Secretary, said the continued exclusion of Turkey from the EU was "unthinkable''. Mr Wolfowitz was meeting Mr Straw in Ankara last night.