Turkey accused the European Union of bias and bigoted attitudes towards the EU candidate country on Monday and blamed it for undermining the Turkish public’s trust in the bloc.Turkey criticised the European Commission’s latest report on its progress towards EU membership as it presented for the first time its own report highlighting its reforms over the last year.Turkey began accession talks in 2005 but the process has ground to a halt due to an intractable dispute over Cyprus, the divided island state which Turkey does not recognise, and opposition from core EU members France and Germany.Despite waning domestic support for joining the EU, Ankara has continued to push for full membership of the union and has said it wants to join before 2023, the centenary of the founding of the Republic of Turkey.“We observed that this year’s Turkey Progress Report was overshadowed by more subjective, biased, unwarranted and bigoted attitudes,” Turkey’s EU Affairs Minister Egemen Bagis said in a statement accompanying Turkey’s own 270-page report.Agencies
