It has taken 40 years, and two days of hard bargaining, but Turkey finally got what it wanted: a date to begin accession proceedings with the European Union.
For Turkey's two-year-old government, the motor behind the country's race to conform with EU norms, it is a great victory
While the European media yesterday morning was hailing the European Parliament's decision to give Turkey a date, Turkey's newspapers painted a much grimmer picture. "Cyprus crisis" yelled the headline on the mass-circulation daily Hurriyet. "Conditional date" said another.
The cause of the alarm was the EU's seemingly innocuous demand that Turkey extend the Customs Union it signed with Europe back in 1996 to the Union's 10 new members. For the Turks, that implied a de facto recognition of the Greek government on Cyprus, which has been partitioned since Turkish troops invaded in 1974 to counter an Athens-backed coup.
A UN attempt to solve the Cyprus issue back in April failed when Greek Cypriots, unlike their Turkish counterparts, voted against a reunification of the island. The Turkish government, which departed from Ankara's traditional hardline policy on Cyprus in supporting pro-Europeans on the island, has since argued that it has done all it could.
Direct or indirect recognition of Greek Cyprus was "out of the question", the Turkish foreign minister, Mr Abdullah Gul, said on Thursday night in a typical piece of unbending Turkish diplomacy. And it worked. Yesterday's final text had replaced demands for an immediate signing of the trade treaty with talk of a verbal promise by October 2005.
"It's the sort of negotiations you'd expect from an old footballer like Erdogan," said political analyst Mehmet Altan. "He went in hard, perhaps a bit too hard, but he won the ball."
Almost surreally, some in Turkey were quick to claim that the Turkish delegation in Brussels had been a failure. Parliamentary opposition leaders went as far as to say all the talk of Cyprus was reason enough for Turkey to quit the talks.
"The government went to Brussels with promises never to bend its head," opposition deputy leader Onur Oymen told the private news channel NTV. "By offering verbal promises on Cyprus, it broke its word. This is deeply saddening and worrying."
Turkish analysts are united in saying that they expect anti-EU groups in the country to begin a campaign to discredit Mr Recep Tayyip Erdogan's team. Turkish politics is not strong on compromise and, by his own admission, the Turkish prime minister was forced to make compromises.
Although analysts generally accept that the long process of integrating Turkey with European legal norms is likely to strengthen the hand of the country's anti-European lobby, in the immediate future Turkey's government looks untouchable.
EU expert Mr Cengiz Aktar was speaking for almost all educated Turks when he described Thursday's decision as "one of the most important days in the history of the Turkish Republic".
The Turkish street, though, has reacted far more cautiously to news of the October 3rd date. In most tea houses in the popular Tophane district of Istanbul, drinkers resolutely watched Mexican soaps or dog races. In one where screens were tuned to Brussels, men briefly raised their heads from card decks at the news that Turkey was "in".
"In any other country in the world, the flags would be raised and there would be parties in all the streets," joked political analyst Mr Cengiz Candar. "The Turkish public has very high expectations."
Indeed there is truth in what he says. In line with their populistic press, and their view of themselves as the proud descendants of a great empire, Turks have never really understood why Europe has taken so long to accept them. In many eyes, anything less than a date for accession would have been little better than an insult.
But Turks also show surprising pragmatism. "Joining the EU does not mean our pockets are automatically going to be filled with money," said carpenter Mr Engin Bas. "All today does is give us the faith to continue the improvements we have been making."