Turkey's relationship with the West is a love-hate one. There are people in Turkey who want to open to the outside world and others who are frightened of the outside world. They don't feel secure; they think that foreigners are trying to harm or even destroy Turkey. But that's not true of the majority of Turks, who want to exercise their skills in a global market.

Accepting Turkey as a member of the European club means that the club is open to outsiders, to Muslims, to poorer people, to developing countries, to countries with a slightly different cultural tradition but basically the same values. I think it's dangerous for the West to close the door; it doesn't do us any good and it doesn't do the rest of the world any good. Also, it reduces the danger of a "clash of civilizations".

I'm optimistic about Turkey's prospects for reaching the E.U.'s standards of development, governance, and democracy, whether inside or outside the E.U. Provided you have a prosperous, rational society in Turkey that can interact with Europe and the West, I don't really care what kind of institutional arrangement you have. The point to make about Turkey and Europe is that it's a very long, drawn-out process. What's important is that the process not be stopped, that Turkey and Europe evolve in the right direction, on a path of convergence. Convergence is the name of the game.

Most Turkish Kurds want a quiet life and improved economic conditions. But the Kurdish regions of Turkey are mountainous; they're ill-favored climatically; they're poor; and there's a limit to what the government can do there without wasting a lot of resources. Developing the south east may mean decamping a large part of its population. But the thing that will improve the lot of the Kurds more than anything else will be the stabilization of Iraq in the first place, because then the Turkish southeast stops being a dead end. It can become a bridge, with trade flowing in both directions.

There's opposition in Europe to Turkish membership because these are the inevitable fears of energetic, poorer, Muslim outsiders who will come in and work hard and take jobs. There's also a fear that under E.U. rules Turkey might get a disproportionate amount of cohesion funds and agricultural subsidies - although it's quite clear that Europe is changing its rules, and that there will not be very much in the way of net transfers of resources from Europe to Turkey.

The Turkish judiciary has a very strong nationalist tradition, which is gradually changing, but only gradually. And since there was a nationalist outcry against Orhan Pamuk's remarks about Turkey's need to confront its past, I'm not surprised that one public prosecutor in an Istanbul borough should have decided to act. I don't expect the proceedings to lead to a conviction. But in any case one mustn't generalize and say that's the way Turkey behaves; it's the way one nationalist public prosecutor behaves.

Turkey's relationship with the West is a love-hate one. There are people in Turkey who want to open to the outside world and others who are frightened of the outside world. They don't feel secure; they think that foreigners are trying to harm or even destroy Turkey. But that's not true of the majority of Turks, who want to exercise their skills in a global market.