ANKARA, Oct. 8 (Xinhuanet) -- Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul said on Friday that a fair date for Turkey to gain full membership of the European Union (EU) would be in 2014, assuming that the EU agreed to open accession negotiations with Ankara at the end of this year.

    Speaking in an exclusive interview with Turkish private television station NTV, Gul said that full-membership date would likely be in 2014 as the EU budget was prepared up to 2013.

    "However, this relies on Turkey's performance. The negotiation process for England took 12 years," Gul said, adding that membership negotiations could start in June 2005 and they were studying other states' accession process.

    The foreign minister said the European Commission (EC)'s Progress Report on Turkey in implementing the reforms required to start membership talks, which was released on Wednesday, had some flaws. However, he added that these should not be allowed to overshadow a historic moment for Turkey.

    "We will work to correct the issues we are not pleased with in the report until December," he said.

    While expressing his displeasure with some aspects of the EC report, Gul said that the free circulation could not be prevented as permanent measure.

    "Free circulation is the spirit of the EU. It can not be prevented as that would be against the spirit of the EU," he told NTV.

    There were other issues more related to technical matters, said Gul, adding that the government would raise objections to some extra scanning process that has been covered.

    As an example of this, Gul cited the issue of Free Market economy and asked, "Is there no free market economy in Turkey but some in Romania and Bulgaria?" Enditem