Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu has said Ankara “will never beg for membership” in the European Union at a time when both Turkey and the 27-member bloc are making efforts to revive the accession talks, currently at a standstill, Today’s Zaman reports.
“We will never beg [for EU membership],” Davutoğlu said during a conference in Finland's capital, Helsinki.
Claiming that the Greek Cypriots are blocking Turkey's EU membership, Davutoğlu said they believe “Turkey will become weaker and beg for membership in the EU.”
Turkey opened accession talks with the EU in 2005, but progress has been slow since then due to the Cyprus dispute as well as opposition to Turkey's membership by some member countries, including France and Germany. Of the 35 chapters that must be successfully negotiated by any candidate country as a condition for membership, only 13 have been opened by Turkey; 17 have been blocked and four have not yet been opened — only one, on science and research, is provisionally closed. No chapters have been opened in the past two-and-a-half years, since the end of the Spanish presidency in June 2010.
