Sipping a lunchtime latte amid the gleaming skyscrapers of Istanbul's financial district, banker Mehmet Canayaz debated whether the European Union should admit Turkey. The prognosis, he admitted, was not good: a dynamic, forward-looking region would end up shackled to an economy with severe debt, financial instability, and an uncompetitive workforce. Best for Turkey, perhaps, to steer clear of the chaotic Brussels club altogether.

"If we don't join, it will be Eur-ope's problem, not ours," said Canayaz, 25, who was relieved to be watching the recent Eurozone crash from the outside rather than the inside.

"If they do let us in one day, fine. But in coming years, it will be them that needs us, more than us needing them. Their economy isn't as competitive as it once was."

The issue of whether the EU should be allowed to join Turkey, rather than Turkey being allowed to join the EU, is not the way the Eurocrats of Brussels have often chosen to phrase it since the stalled membership talks formally began in 1987.

But the EU's Foreign Affairs High Representative, Baroness Ashton, in Ankara for fresh accession talks this week, may well find no shortage of Turks asking the same question the same way round as Canayaz.

Fed up with being rebuffed by France and Germany, proud of their successful economy, and increasingly keen to court their fellow Muslim neighbours to the East, a growing number of Turkey's 73 million citizens are now wondering whether EU membership is quite so important as it once seemed. While nearly three quarters of Turks supported the idea in 2004, some polls show less than half doing so now.

Among those whom Baroness Ashton will meet is the man most closely associated with Turkey's re-assessment of its outside interests, Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu. A key figure in the AKP party, the moderate Islamist movement that has ruled Turkey for the last eight years, he is widely seen as the prime mover in his country's cooling off towards the West.

Alarm bells

Turkey's fury with Israel over the shooting of nine Turkish activists on an aid ship to Gaza, and its controversial recent uranium deal with Iran, have both rung alarm bells in some western capitals — including Washington — over the country's apparent tilt back to the East.

They are all part of what many describe as Davutoglu's "neo-Ottomanist" world view, seeking to recreate the days when Turks wielded clout from central Europe to the Gulf. Critics fear that in courting far more radical Islamic governments, Turkey will reach a tipping point where it may turn its face away from Europe.

True, at a meeting in London recently with Britain's new Foreign Secretary William Hague, Turkey's answer to Henry Kissinger struck a more conciliatory note, insisting Ankara still wanted to join the EU.

But in a speech last month in Rize on Turkey's Black Sea coast, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was less diplomatic. "I tell [European leaders] that if you are not a Christian club, you are obliged to accept Turkey," he said.

It is not just Erdogan who is thinking twice about EU membership, however.

In the alleys of the conservative, working-class Istanbul district of Fatih, where locals still prefer traditional Turkish coffee to Starbucks, attitudes to Europe are similarly indifferent.

"It is not necessary for us to be a member of the EU," said Emine Erdem, 49, a mother waiting for evening prayers outside the local mosque.

This alarms pro-European Turks, who share the anger at the EU snub, but fear that throwing in their lot with their Muslim allies could embolden the AKP party to impose a more Islamic society.

"People in Britain may think this government is moderate and liberal, but they are not," said Ayse Ozek Karasu, the editor of Haberturk newspaper.

Hague, however, may struggle to persuade fellow Europeans to change their minds.

Talks are so far only open on 13 of the 35 policy areas, or "chapters", that the EU requires to be legally fulfilled before membership can even be considered, and even if France and Germany were to mellow, nobody expects membership much prior to 2020.

It is a long time to wait.