ANKARA
Responding to a question over Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's no showing at a ceremony on Monday to commemorate Mevlana Jalal al-Din Rumi, founder of Islam's Mevlevi order, Erdogan said the Patriot air-defense missile deployment issue had nothing to do with the Iranian president's nonattendance.
"We have extended an invitation. And several reasons have been cited for his absence but the Patriots are not one them," Erdogan told reporters.
Erdogan also dismissed remarks by Iran's top general who said that the deployment of the Patriot batteries "will ignite the Third World War."
We fully support Turkey's EU membership, says Portugal premier
Portugal prime minister has said that his country was fully supporting Turkey's European Union membership.
Speaking at a joint conference with his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara, the Turkish capital, Portugal's Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho reiterated support on Turkey's EU accession.
Stating that EU was gradually strengthening the union, "Regarding the enlargement of the EU, we reiterate full support to Turkey's membership. We actively defend the need to revitalize negotiations. We support in particular the opening of the visa dialogue in parallel to the signature of the re-admission agreement," said Coelho.
Coelho stated that Turkey and Portugal were close allies and friends despite the physical distance.
We share several values which represent good platform not only for our commercial trade but also political values around the world, Coelho stated.
Touching on the inking of new agreements with Turkey today, Coelho expressed that he was particularly glad that they were upgrading their partnership to a new status.
"I believe that this strategic upgrade will contribute to the visibility of our partnership. It also allow us to better see opportunity to increase cooperation in many areas of common interest at political and cultural levels. We agree that there is a vast potential to be explored in economic and commercial fields. Our bilateral trade has grown over the years, and it had reached around 20 percent in the average, but much more can be done in particular if we encourage our businessman to take advantage from the fact that Portugal and Turkey are two important hubs for many regions, Africa and Latin America in Portugal's case, and the Middle East, Central Asia, the Caucasus in case of Turkey," said Coelho.
Coelho stated that they also exchanged views on regional issues of common interest, in particular the Syria crisis.
"I expressed to Prime Minister Erdogan our strong solidarity with Turkey and our full support to NATO's roles in defending Turkish population as a territory against any threat from Syria," said visiting PM.
Answering a question over privatization of the TAP Portugal airlines, Coelho said that Turkish companies could not present proposal because of the European laws. He added that in the future, in the second wave of the process Turkish enterprises would be able to present proposals.
