The results of European Parliament election have caused deep concern in European Union candidate Turkey, where gains made by conservatives and some far-right parties have been read as a  clear win by the “No to Turkey” camp” and thus a blow to Ankara’s already troubled EU membership quest.

Trying to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, Turkish  Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan dismissed the vote as a “futile effort by those who cannot digest Turkey’s enormity and strategic importance”. He said politicians who vilified Turkey to win votes in the short term would be judged by history.

Erdogan was probably referring to anti-immigration parties  that have openly campaigned against predominantly Muslim Turkey’s accession bid, among them the Dutch Freedom Party of  Geert Wilders who promised that Turkey would not join the  union: “Not in 10 years, not in a million years.”

But last week’s results certainly don’t bode well for Erdogan’s European dreams and come as pressure is mounting for Ankara to push ahead with long-delayed reforms.

The European Parliament has no power to make decisions on EU enlargement, but the European Commission is expected to bear in mind how people voted in the election when shaping policy over coming months. The European Parliament also publishes periodic assessments of progress in Turkey and has been critical in the past of Ankara’s record on human rights, freedom of expression and police mistreatment, to name a few areas.

So-called “friends of Turkey” such as Britain’s Gordon Brown, Spain’s Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero and Germany’s Social Democrats suffered significant defeats, deepening a sinking feeling in Ankara that it is being left alone to face the wolves.

Meanwhile, the European Commission in December will review its decision to freeze eight of 35 “chapters” — or membership areas — because of Turkey’s refusal to open its ports to Cypriot vessels.

Will France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel — who oppose full membership for Turkey and whose parties did well in the European Parliament vote — press for Turkey’s EU membership to be put on hold?

Are Turkey and the EU heading for a clash?  

BASRA - It may not be the end-game Britain was hoping for when it ventured into Iraq, but it’s the end of the game nonetheless.

By the end of next May, almost exactly six years after 42,000 British troops joined the U.S.-led invasion and overthrew Saddam Hussein, Prime Minister Gordon Brown says Britain’s remaining 4,100 troops will be out of Iraq and his country’s role in the war over.

The overwhelming question, after 2,200 days of conflict and 178 soldiers killed, not to mention the thousands seriously wounded and the vast sums of money expended, is clearly: was it all worth it in the end?

Brown, who inherited the conflict from his predecessor Tony Blair and has never been entirely comfortable with taking on the mantle of ‘conquering commander-in-chief’, has been at pains to say it was, and spent Wednesday reiterating that point.

Making his fourth trip to Iraq as prime minister, Brown emphasised the training Britain’s troops had provided in Basra and the southern region, helping put 42,000 Iraqi police and soldiers onto the streets to maintain security for themselves.

Insurgent groups in and around Basra, a vital oil hub that at one stage looked liked falling into the hands of the Shi’ite militia known as the Mehdi Army, have been defeated, Brown said.

And as well as plans for another round of provincial elections at the end of January — a sign that democracy is taking root — the economy in the south is showing steady signs of growth, with inflation sharply down, oil exports up and the port of Umm Qasr busy hauling in much-demanded foreign goods.

But compare those outcomes — which remain tentative — with what Britain (and the United States with its claims of weaons of mass destruction) set out to achieve in Iraq, and ask Iraqis what they think, and a very different picture emerges.

Six years on, Iraqis complain about the persistent lack of electricity, which in some areas has still not reached the same level it was at before the invasion. They lament the number of civilians killed in military operations, and the number of Iraqis still languishing in military prisons.

The insurgency may have died down, they say, but it always threatens to return and security on the streets of Iraq is far from guaranteed. Economically, things may be improving, but jobs are few and far between and corruption is rife. The oil wealth the country is beginning to enjoy is not widely distributed.

In terms of politics, the successful staging of national and provincial elections has given Iraqis a feel for the process of democracy, but Iraqis often say they do not feel they have benefitted from the process — politics is a power game played way above their heads with little visible trickle down.

And then there are the persistent threats of internal breakdown, with the Shi’ite majority facing off against Sunnis, the Arab population nervous of Kurdish strength, and Iraqi nationalists fearful of the growing influence of Shi’ite Iran.

Those concerns, as well as the fact that any of the gains are easily reversed, leave many Iraqis (at least in the south) deeply ambivalent about the role that Britain has played.

Come mid-2009, when the last British military convoys are likely to be pulling out of Iraq, even British diplomats admit they don’t expect Iraqis to lay on parades in their honour.

It may not quite be good riddance from Iraq, and Britain may not have to leave with its tail between its legs, but by the same token it may be difficult for the military to leave with its head held high knowing the job had been well done.

(Pool photo of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown with troops in Umm Qasr port in Iraq)

So Prime Minister Gordon Brown has succeeded – by the skin of his teeth — in getting Britain’s House of Commons to approve new police counter-terrorism powers that were condemned by civil liberties groups, a former prime minister, a U.N. human rights investigator and several dozen of Brown’s own Labour MPs. The Guardian newspaper writes about ‘Liberty, security and an anxiety over lost rights’.

And even the government admits the power to hold terrorism suspects for up to 42 days before charging or releasing them has never been needed until now: it wants it as an insurance policy against future attacks or plots in which the police may need more than the 28 days they now have in order to investigate tangled international links, false identities and masses of encrypted computer files.

So what’s going on? The bald figures suggest Britain is way out of step with other democracies. The six weeks allowed under the bill for initial questioning of terrorism suspects compares with one day in Canada, two in the United States, Germany, South Africa and New Zealand, five in Spain and 12 in Australia.

But the bald figures don’t tell the whole story. Police in most European countries, for example, hand cases over to a judge or prosecutor after the first few days and the suspect may wait in jail for months or years while the investigation proceeds. Britain can also plausibly argue, on the basis of the number of plots intercepted in the past few years, that it is more threatened than most countries by al Qaeda-inspired militants.

Opinion polls suggest the public backs Brown on this issue, although his overall popularity rating is dire. And with the House of Lords likely to oppose the bill and send it back for re-consideration by the lower chamber, Brown is far from being out of the woods.

Expect more debate in coming months on possible alternative means of tackling terrorism — particularly on whether to let British police, like their counterparts nearly everywhere else, use evidence from tapping suspects’ phones as ammunition to prosecute them in court.

Despite the embarrassment caused this week when a senior security official left top-secret intelligence documents on a train, the British authorities have a strong record in countering terrorism. Since 2004 the country has seen at least one major plot each year, and many smaller ones. Only one succeeded: the July 2005 London suicide attacks that killed 52 people. So far, 2008 has been a quieter year — but the emergence of any major new threat could once again shift the goalposts in the security debate.