World Cup success a lesson for Turkish politicians?
"Turkey's image has changed, its trademark has gained value," one tour agency head was quoted as saying.
Ralph Boulton, ANKARA, June 19 (Reuters) - Turks are hoping some of the confidence and teamwork shown by their winning World Cup team might rub off on their politicians, dithering and squabbling on the road to economic salvation and EU membership.

A taste of glory on the soccer field has left many agreeing with the headline of one major newspaper: "Forget the Crisis, Watch the Football."

Soccer is only soccer, say some. But others see deep lessons for a political culture weak on consensus and for a three-party government unable to muster on key EU-inspired reforms the unity, decisiveness and tactical sense of Turkey's footballers.

"It can be done when you have self-confidence," was the political lesson drawn by commentator Mehmet Ali Birand in the English-language Turkish Daily News.

"We can cover more than half the ground if we demolish the walls in our minds, break the moulds and trust ourselves."

Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit's Democratic Left Party and the Motherland Party are at loggerheads with rightist Nationalist Action Party (MHP) coalition partners over reforms --including abolition of the death penalty and easing of curbs on the Kurdish language -- demanded by the EU to open membership talks.

Team discipline has slipped during Ecevit's month-long illness.

ANOTHER TURKEY
Economists see evidence of progress towards the EU as vital for foreign investment needed to overcome the deepest recession since 1945. But the MHP argues the reforms would undermine Turkish unity and revive the separatist violence that cost 30,000 lives in the mainly Kurdish southeast over two decades.

Fears for government unity have hit markets overshadowed by a February 2001 crisis that has left over a million unemployed.

Rightists opposed to reforms demanded by the EU play heavily on a widespread feeling among Muslim Turks that "whatever we do the Europeans will turn us down. They don't want us Turks."

Journalist Okay Gonensin listed bad things with which, to his mind, the world associates Turkey: economic crisis, bombs, torture, corruption, lack of democracy, journalists jailed.

"This is one Turkey," he wrote in Sabah daily. "The Turkey presented to the world by politicians is so different from the Turkey shown the world by its athletes, scientists and artists.

"This (soccer) success can draw attention to other successes and prevent the other Turkey from being ignored."

The sense of being ignored or willfully misunderstood is strong. Foreigners see not the progress made in the last 20 years in opening up the media, the economy and the country. They see only the long road still to travel.

Abroad, Turkish officials, sometimes rightly, sometimes not, are viewed as cantankerous, even bloody-minded in negotiations.

Birand comes back to the issue of Turkish self-confidence.

"We could succeed if only we stopped saying '(the EU) won't let us in anyway' and locked onto the target... Why not work the same miracle on the EU issue as on soccer?"

A YEAR OF DECISION
This year is one that will shape Turkey's future. Neither of two possible "extreme outcomes" can be ruled out.

Turkey might after all muster the resolve to pass human rights reforms and produce the deal sought by the EU to reunite the Mediterranean island of Cyprus.

Even then, the EU is unlikely to set the firm date Turkey is seeking for membership talks. Talks begin, quite simply, when reforms are finished. December's EU summit could then do much to speed Turkey's passage.

The dark extreme is extended domestic conflict and deadlock on reform and over Cyprus. The EU summit might do little or nothing to encourage Turkey. Bitterness with the West, never that far below the surface, flourishes and anti-EU forces win ascendancy.

The chairman of the tourist agents' association said the promotion for Turkey gained from soccer success was worth $100 million or more. "Turkey's image has changed, its trademark has gained value," one tour agency head was quoted as saying.

Turkey's soccer players might follow up their victory over Japan and blast their way into the World Cup semi-finals by beating Senegal on Saturday, further boosting the national self-image of Turks, from stockbroker to street sweeper.

"Victory over Japan is surely not going to correct the economy," Hasan Pulur wrote in Milliyet newspaper. "It will not... provide jobs for the jobless and wealth for the poor.

"But we did need a joy like this."