As Turkey sprints for EU-acceptability, the process of implementation limps behind, Nicholas Birch reports from Istanbul.
Turks have never had much respect for their governments. The state? Yes. The army? Absolutely. Elected leaders? A byword for nepotism, impotence and delay.
This week, though, Turkey's new ex-Islamist government hussled through parliament a bill legalising Kurdish broadcasting on private TV and scrapping a law used to imprison thousands of journalists and human rights campaigners for "separatist propaganda". Attitudes it seems are slowly beginning to change.
"This could be a turning point," says Cuneyt Ulsever, liberal columnist for the mass circulation newspaper, Hurriyet.
Senior ministers pledged to pass the bill in time for the EU summit in Thessalonika, and parliament obliged with unanimity on Thursday night.
But their haste has riled the army, which criticised the proposed changes a month ago and had hoped to have another chance to intervene at the monthly meeting of civilian and military leaders scheduled for June 27th.
"If the government does as it promises, it will be a very courageous step," Mr Ulsever said. "These monthly meetings have enabled the military to dictate a lot of policy. The vote will in effect reduce it to the role it has always claimed to have - purely advisory."
Such enthusiasm is common among Turkish liberals. Brussels, meanwhile, remains more cautious, praising "serious steps" towards EU harmonisation but criticising the "yawning gap" between legislation and implementation.
They are the kind of comments that make many pro-European Turks foam at the mouth.
But as a controversy that erupted this week around Turkey's semi-autonomous broadcasting corporation TRT shows, there is truth to them.
Early last August, the previous government passed a controversial law opening the way for Kurdish-language programmes to be broadcast on TRT.
"The ball's in your court now, Europe," roared over-optimistic headlines at the time.
Ten months on, the corporation's four channels are still strictly Turkish.
As an investigation by the liberal newspaper, Radikal, this week makes clear, the delay is far from innocent.
"They told us they were preparing the new programmation," ran a headline in Wednesday's edition of the paper.
"In fact, they've appealed to the supreme court to annul the law."
TRT's case is couched in rigorously legal terms. As an autonomous body, it argues, it has no obligation to obey government orders.
Decisions to broadcast in languages other than Turkish depend wholly on its own internal regulations.
Corporation managers also object that the law would require them to be monitored by the Supreme Broadcasting Board, a state organ set up 15 years ago to keep tabs on privately-owned radio and TV.
Mr Haluk Sahin, now a lecturer in media studies at Bilgi University in Istanbul, is reminded of his experiences as a TRT adviser in the late 1970s.
"When we suggested a change, they would say, 'that runs counter to x regulation', or, 'you can't do that because of y appendix'.
"It's sad to see that nothing has changed," Mr Sahin said.
Nourished by recent civil war in the south-east and the establishment's insistence on the country's "insoluble unity", memories of British and French attempts to carve up Turkey after 1918 are still fresh here.
For many, minority language broadcasting still holds a sulphurous whiff of separatism. Mr Sahin has no doubt such fears form the foundations of TRT's court case.
"Conservatives are strong in the TRT," he said. "Legally, they may have a case, but their mentality flies in the face of the whole idea of non-discriminatory public service.
"A responsible public body would have volunteered the changes itself."
Mr Yucel Yener, the former TRT boss who brought the case, is unrepentant.
"We have suspended preparations for minority broadcasts indefinitely," he said. "And we will win this case."
"It looks like Ankara should start looking for a good legal adviser," Mr Sahin said.