German Chancellor Angela Merkel is campaigning for a ramping up of the European Union's disciplinary approach towards Turkey. Given Ankara's unwillingness to open its ports to Cypriot ships, the European Commission has already recommended suspending EU accession talks with Ankara in a number of as-yet-unspecified areas.

But Merkel, of the conservative Christian Democratic Union party, wants to go a step further and make it harder for accession talks to be resumed by using the EU's so-called "review clause." If the procedure were implemented, even if Turkey complied with EU demands, it wouldn't herald an immediate reopening of talks. The clause would freeze talks for 12 to 18 months and negotiations could only be resumed again if all 27 member countries of the EU Council supported going back to the negotiating table.

At the NATO summit in Riga last week Merkel was already promoting her plan which is supported by the governments of Cyprus and Greece. Turkey has so far refused to open up its ports and has said it will not take any unilateral steps to do so unless the Cypriots also make concessions. Talks on reaching a deal between Cyprus and Turkey led by the Finnish EU presidency collapsed earlier this month . And EU member states meeting at a summit in Brussels on Dec. 14 are likely to decide to either suspend negotiations with Turkey altogether or limit them to specific areas.

Merkel's move is significant because it demonstrates that she is distancing herself from the Turkey-friendly course of her foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier of the Social Democratic Party. But in a conversation with Merkel, Steinmeier said he believed that the activation of the revision clause was likely to happen anyway due to pressure from Greece and Cyprus. However, in contrast to the chancellor, Steinmeier has so far refused to demand an escalation of punitary measures against Ankara.

In Germany, support for Turkish membership in the EU has never been much greater than lukewarm. At the peak of support, 57 percent of Germans supported Ankara's accession back in May, according to a survey conducted by TNS Infratest for SPIEGEL. However, the most recent poll taken last month shows only 50 percent supporting it and 45 percent outright rejecting it.