Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said Saturday that Turkey will not accept anything short of a full EU membership but instead should be part of the decision-making mechanism of the European Union (EU).
"Our objective is a full membership with equal rights," Erdogan told a group of high-profile diplomats at a key security conference in the southern German city of Munich that opened on Friday.
The prime minister underlined Turkey's geographical importance and the country's commitment to peace and stability in the region.
Turkey is "determined" to continue to make efforts to meet the EU accession standards, he said.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy opposed full Turkish membership and instead have offered Turkey a "privileged partnership," which was bluntly rejected by Ankara.
"We don't find it credible... Turkey is not going to consider other options," said Erdogan.
Merkel said Friday in Berlin after meeting Erdogan that Turkey still has a long way to go before joining the 27-member bloc.
The EU has frozen the access negotiations with Turkey on eight chapters in 2006 in response to Turkey's refusal to grant trade privileges to Cyprus which Ankara does not recognize.
The annual three-day security meeting, attended by high-profile diplomats including Secretary General of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates and EU foreign-policy chief Javier Solana this year, is scheduled to discuss a range of the world's most thorny issues.
Source: Xinhua
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