BRUSSELS - The European Union will try to hammer out a coherent policy on relations with Turkey tomorrow following the blunt rejection of Turkey's EU membership hopes by a number of the Union's leaders.
At a meeting in the Dutch town of Apeldoorn, starting today and otherwise likely to be dominated by worries over Albania, EU foreign ministers will try to assuage fears that they have turned their back on Turkey, risking an angry Islamic backlash.
The trigger for the discussion was a flurry of undiplomatic comments about Turkey's fitness to be in the European club, emanating last week from a meeting of mainly Christian Democrat EU leaders in Brussels.