The elections in Northern Cyprus this weekend could turn out to be the most important held in 2003, even though there are only 140 000 voters and the result won’t be recognised anywhere outside the Northern Cyprus enclave and its increasingly reluctant sponsor, Turkey.

The elections raise the prospect that Turkish Cypriots will finally dump separatist leader Rauf Denktash and join the rest of Cyprus when it enters the EU next year. That in turn would remove the biggest single obstacle to the admission of Turkey to candidate status, a process that would probably lead to Turkish entry to the EU around 2010. The EU has rightly kept Turkey at arms length while demanding improvements in human rights and efforts to resolve the Cyprus question, but any further delay can only be seen as the product of a search for excuses.

As I’ve said before, the admission of Turkey to the EU (or its exclusion) is in many ways, the biggest single geopolitical question facing the world today. For a start, it would mean that Europe would have borders with Iran, Iraq and Syria. More generally, the success or failure of Europe in integrating Muslim countries, beginning with Turkey, will do more to determine future relations between Islam and the West than any military expedition.