"We hope that agreements on the visa-free travel of Turkish citizens in the Schengen area and the agreement on re-admission [Turkey's potential EU membership] will also go into effect in July 2016," Davutoglu said in Istanbul.
The Prime Minister also expressed hopes that Turkey will soon proudly hold a place in "the EU family photo."
"We want to make the process of accepting Turkey into the EU faster and begin negotiations on the opening of the 17th paragraph on the economy and monetary policy," Merkel said, clearly making pro-EU Turks happier.
Accelerated negotiations between Turkey and the EU sound like a good thing for Ankara, considering that the country signed the association agreement with the EU back in 1963. Then Turkey had to wait 24-years before it could formally apply for EU membership in 1987. After a long period of inactivity, accession negotiations finally started in 2005.
Since then the parties only agreed on 14 out of 35 chapters of the acquis communautaire, the accumulated legislation and legal acts of EU law that every EU-candidate state must complete in order to join the union.
In the past, fed up with the long and indecisive action on behalf of the EU when it comes to Turkish membership in the EU, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan stated that if the EU is truly opposed to Islamophobia then it should accept Turkey into its ranks.
"We are testing Europe. Will Europe be able to digest and accept Turkey, whose people are Muslims? If you oppose Islamophobia, then you must admit Turkey into the EU," Erdogan said, stating that otherwise the EU is a "Christian club" that doesn't want to accept Turkey because it is a Muslim nation.
