Historically Turkey hasn't had much success in attracting foreign investment. Slowly that is changing. There's a tradition of arbitrary decisions by government ministers and senior civil servants, which would ruin businesses from one day to the next, and which has tended to deter foreign investment. That's changing, and convergence with E.U. practices is a good thing in that it improves governance.

In Turkey religion not only affects society but is affected by it, which is why Turkish Islam differs from Arab Islam. It's a more modern, more rational, more self-confident society.

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.

Istanbul and the western and southern seaboards are very Europeanized. But then you have the Kurdish areas, in the southeast. That's Turkey's Middle East, where you have a different society, which itself is changing but much more slowly, where women are maltreated, are expected to have huge families, and are often basically beasts of burden. That is changing - with education, with the movement of people from the southeast to the west and the cities. As with so much in Turkey, you can't expect change to happen overnight.

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".

In recent years the military has gradually been eased out of political life in Turkey. The military budget is now subject to much more parliamentary scrutiny than before. The National Security Council, through which the military used to exercise influence over the government is now a purely consultative body. But Turkish society still sees the military as the guarantor of law and order. The army is trusted, held in high regard - though not by dissident liberals. When things go wrong, people expect the military to intervene, as they've intervened over and over again in Turkish history.

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.