ISTANBUL (Reuters) — Turkey is sleepwalking towards a potential crisis with the European Union later this year, as electoral politics take precedence over EU-driven reforms in a mood of mutual disenchantment.Far from accelerating Turkey’s march towards membership, the start of entry talks last October 3 seems to have prompted a step back on both sides, with Turks questioning Europe’s sincerity, while many Europeans fret about whether they want Turkey at all. The executive European Commission is set to give Ankara a critical interim report card when Turkish and EU foreign ministers meet on June 12 and negotiations on the first of 35 policy areas begin in earnest.

EU officials say it will point to persistent problems with freedom of expression, religious and minority rights and the role of the military in political life despite past reforms.

“The real problem is that they’ve halted the reform process,” said one EU official involved in the talks, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The trigger for early trouble is Turkey’s refusal to open its ports and airports to traffic from Cyprus, as required under a customs union with the 25-nation bloc, extended to cover the ten new EU members in the so-called Ankara protocol last year. “We will have some crisis with Turkey in the second half of the year because they haven’t solved the Ankara agreement and Cyprus,” said a senior EU ambassador in Brussels.

EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn said in an interview with Reuters in March he was working to avoid a “train crash” over Cyprus and urged Ankara to step up the pace of reforms.

Cyprus, which like all EU members has a right of veto over the talks, has warned it will take a tough line on the review. Yet despite a bout of financial market turbulence, there is no sense in Turkey of a European risk. Indeed the EU accession process that dominated politics for the last four years has almost vanished from the headlines. Turkish analysts say the government is putting key EU reform issues aside in the run-up to presidential and parliamentary elections next year.

One government official said Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan has told aides he wants to focus more on domestic politics than the EU dossier.

The Turkish media is full of fierce religious-secular debate about wearing the Muslim headscarf, a resurgence of Kurdish separatist violence in the southeast and speculation about whom the ruling AK Party, with roots in political Islam, will put up for president. “We are already in a pre-election period so the prime minister is striking more nationalist attitudes,” said Hassan Cemal, a respected liberal commentator in Milliyet daily.

“This could create the impression that Turkey is changing and turning its back on Europe.”

But he noted that support for Turkey’s EU candidacy remains strong at 59 percent though down from 70 percent before October.

In one small indicator of official indifference, hardly any government representatives came to a two-day international conference on Turkey’s EU membership in Istanbul last week, ostensibly because of Erdogan’s visit to Germany.

The one ruling parliamentarian who did attend, Zekeriya Akcam, bemoaned “new ambiguities” in the EU’s attitude to the giant, poor, mainly Muslim candidate country. “I am not pessimistic, but after October 3, I started looking at the empty part of the half-full glass,” he said.

Recent events have highlighted the challenges of integrating Turkey, a proud nation of 70 million, into the EU, even over a decade or longer.

The armed forces chief called on Turks to demonstrate in support of secularism after a gunman shot dead a top judge who had upheld a ban on women wearing the Muslim headscarf.

The government has proposed a new anti-terrorism bill that would reintroduce jail sentences for journalists deemed to “propagate terrorism”. Several people were killed in a tough crackdown on violent Kurdish separatist demonstrations.

To some critics, Turkish leaders seem to be resting on their laurels, proclaiming that each new European problem <\m> whether over cartoons with the Muslim world or gas supplies with Russia <\m> shows how indispensable Turkey is to Europe, rather than doing their EU homework.