Visiting Portuguese Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho said Tuesday that his country fully supports Turkey's European Union (EU) membership, the semi-official Anatolia news agency reported.

Coelho made the remarks at a joint conference with his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the Turkish capital of Ankara after their official talks.

"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.

He said Turkey and Portugal were close allies and friends despite the geographical distance, adding that the two countries shared commercial trade values between each other and political values around the world.

During the inking of new agreements with Turkey on Tuesday, Coelho said he was particularly glad the two countries were upgrading their partnership to a new status.

The strategic upgrade will "allow us to better see the opportunity to increase the cooperation in many areas of common interests at political and cultural levels," Coelho said.

"We agree that there is a vast potential to be explored in economic and commercial fields," he said.