By STEPHEN KINZER

STANBUL, Turkey -- When the Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah
Ocalan was captured in February and brought to prison in chains,
many Turks celebrated jubilantly. Now they are finding that his case
could bar their way to Europe.

A Turkish court has sentenced Ocalan to hang, but in Europe the death
penalty is considered barbaric. On Tuesday the European Court of
Human Rights asked Turkey to delay Ocalan's execution until it finishes
reviewing the case, which could take a year or longer.

Turks are being given an early taste of how much national sovereignty
they will lose if they reach their long-sought goal of joining the European
Union.

At a summit meeting in Helsinki, Finland, next week, European leaders
will make a possibly crucial decision on whether to accept Turkey as an
official candidate for membership in the union. They have already warned
that whatever they decide, Turkey's prospects will collapse if Ocalan is
executed.

"It's not only about Ocalan," said Prime Minister Paavo Lipponen of
Finland, whose government holds the rotating chairmanship of the
European Union. "It's about the death sentence. The death sentence does
not belong in Europe."

Nationalism is strong in Turkey, but so is desire to join the European
Union. One of these impulses will have to weaken if the other is to
survive.

The government is divided over how to proceed. Prime Minister Bulent
Ecevit opposes the death penalty, but Deputy Prime Minister Devlet
Bahceli, who heads the right-wing Nationalist Action party, favors it.

"Linking Turkey's membership in the EU to a terrorist chieftain is quite
upsetting," Bahceli said in a speech this week. "This attitude is not only an
insult and injustice to Turkey, but also brings shame on the EU itself."

Behind statements like those lie profound misgivings about how fervently
Turkey should pursue its campaign to join the European Union. The
misgivings are being voiced more frequently now that the union seems
ready to make Turkey an official candidate.

"If we get rid of the death penalty, they will say our environmental laws
are not strong enough," said Altemur Kilic, a retired diplomat who is a
member of Nationalist Action. "Then, after we change the environmental
laws, they will say we don't protect homosexual rights. It will go on and
on and on. I disagree with my intellectual friends who are ready to give
up our independence in order to enter the European Union. We were not
born with Europe and we won't die without Europe."

Many Turks, however, view membership in the European Union as a
huge prize that would solidify the country's shaky democracy and
guarantee its future prosperity.

"Keeping Ocalan alive is in Turkey's best interests," said Mehmet Ali
Irtemcelik, a cabinet minister whose portfolio includes human rights and
European affairs. He said that carrying out the death sentence would
prevent Turkey from reaching "extraordinarily bright horizons."

"We can't allow Ocalan to be a shackle around our ankle in the era
ahead," Irtemcelik said. "If you look at this as an Ocalan problem, you'll
be jumping into a canoe of emotions and will get carried downstream."

Even if Turkey succeeds at the summit meeting next week and is selected
as an official candidate for membership in the European Union, it will
have far to go before it can be admitted. Thousands of laws and
regulations, affecting matters from press freedom to the size of bananas,
would have to be changed to conform with European standards.

That process could take many years, and would certainly arouse the
passion of Turkish nationalists. It would also illustrate a fundamental fact
about the European Union that is not widely understood here: that joining
this exclusive club requires what may be the most sweeping voluntary
surrender of sovereignty in the history of the nation-state.

European leaders have already begun reminding Turkey of this reality.
Foreign Minister Jozias van Aartsen of the Netherlands met with Turkish
leaders in Ankara on Monday, and said afterward that if Turkey wants to
join the European Union, it must improve its human rights record, curb
the power of the military in politics, change its approach to minorities and
make new overtures to Greece.

"We are interested in what will happen after Helsinki," van Aartsen said.
"There must be a period of improvements."