Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has agreed to receive Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson, who said on Thursday he was ready to go immediately to Turkey to gain Ankara’s support for Sweden’s accession to NATO.
“The new Swedish Prime Minister asked to be received. I said to our friends: ‘Make an appointment for him to come,'” said the Turkish head of state, quoted by the Turkish press, on his return from a trip to Azerbaijan.
Erdogan, who has already threatened to block Sweden and Finland’s accession to NATO, reiterated that the Turkish parliament will not ratify the two countries’ accession to the organization until Ankara’s extradition requests for Kurdish fighters are met.
“These terrorists … should be in prison and not free,” the Turkish president said.
The head of state accuses Sweden and Finland of protecting Kurdish fighters from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and the People’s Protection Units (YPG) in particular, which are considered “terrorist” organizations by Turkey.
So far, 28 member states, out of a total of 30 from the Atlantic Alliance, have ratified the accession of Sweden and Finland, in a process decided in response to the new Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Turkey and Hungary have not yet decided to finalize the agreement.
At the end of June last year, at the NATO summit in Madrid, Finland and Sweden signed a memorandum initiating the process of the two countries joining the organization.
The Turkish president immediately threatened to veto the accession and imposed on the two countries the extradition of Kurdish citizens being persecuted by Ankara.
Source: DN
