TINSTAAFI.....
The Caravan (208) is often thought of mistakenly as some sort of short field bush style aircraft....it's not...it's primarily designed for Fed-Ex type ops into 2nd and 3rd level airports and is not considered a short field performer....in fact at gross it's not that much better than a B200....though it does have advantages on rough strips....
As for the CAA having an "Anti SE turbine mind-set"...it may be with good reason....as I've posted before on the subject...undoubtedly turbines are incredibly reliable in comparison with piston a/c.... however, I don't think that at present there are any SE turbine aircraft flying that are 30 years old....In 7000 hrs of turbo-prop ops on turbine twins I've had 4 fire warnings (3 spurious,1 genuine)...lost all oil out of an engine during an ILS approach to minimums with a full load of pax and had to shut an engine down that was going out of control due to a computer malfunction....Over 7000 hrs it doesn't sound like much but in a single it only has to happen once. The turbines are hugely reliable...the ancilliary equipment that these engines depend on is not always as good...As these aircraft get older...especially in Europe with the excruciatingly high operating costs, the operaters will be those at the lower end of the spectrum who by circumstances will be forced to keep maintenance to the bare legal minimum...those who've flown for these outfits will recognise what that means.....
Don't be in too much of a hurry to see IFR SE turbine commercial ops legalised in Europe...