Turkey wants to press for full EU membership

BERLIN, Germany

Turkey is not ready to make any concessions in its EU membership negotiations, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said on Tuesday (June 16th), after talks with his German counterpart Frank-Walter Steinmeier in Berlin.

“Our goal is full membership. Turkey is not considering another alternative,” he told a joint press conference after the meeting. The two ministers also discussed ways to strengthen bilateral ties and plans to establish a German-Turkish University in Istanbul.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy recently rejected the idea of full membership for Turkey and instead called for a “privileged partnership”.