During his speech to the Parliament, Erdogan reportedly underlined the country will not unilaterally abandon the stalled EU accession talks.
"We will not be the side which gives up. To tell the truth, we don't need EU membership anymore," Erdogan said.
Earlier in the month, Omer Celik, Turkey's Minister of European Union Affairs and the Chief Negotiator for Turkish Accession to the European Union, accused the European Commission of "using the EU negotiating process as a way to blackmail Turkey," which he called a "weakening and discrediting [of] the EU institutions."
In September, EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said that Turkey's membership of the European Union was out of the question for the foreseeable future. He pointed out that Turkey was rapidly pulling away from the European Union, adding that Europe was still willing to cooperate with Ankara, but only based on European values.
In May, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan slammed Europe for discrimination, cultural racism, xenophobia, and Islamophobia, adding that these tendencies resulted in the deterioration of relations between Ankara and Brussels.
