The Swedish Prime Minister, Ulf Kristersson, said this Sunday that the Turkish government is imposing a series of demands on Sweden to accept NATO membership that Stockholm “cannot and does not want to meet”.
“[A Turquia] he wants things we can’t and don’t want to give him. now the decision [da adesão à Aliança Atlântica] falls on the Turks”, declared the Swedish prime minister during the People and Defense Conference, held in Stockholm, quoted by the newspaper ‘Aftonbladet’.
The conference was also attended by the Secretary General of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Jens Stoltenberg, and the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Finland, Pekka Haavisto, another country that has also applied to join NATO for, after the Russian invasion of the Ukraine, to protect itself from the Russian threat and which, like Sweden, depends on the lifting of the Turkish veto.
Turkey has refused to admit the two countries to the Atlantic Alliance until they hand over all the people accused by Ankara of belonging to Kurdish organizations declared by the Turkish government as terrorist groups, such as the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
On the other hand, Turkey also calls for the opening of the bilateral arms trade. Before the conference, the head of Finnish diplomacy assured that Finland will wait for Turkey and Sweden to resolve the differences.
“We are not in such a rush to join NATO. In any case, we hope Sweden gets the green light,” Haavisto said.
On the 3rd of this month, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Çavusoglu insisted that Finland and Sweden have to take “further steps” to meet Ankara’s demands for a “green light” from Turkey to join NATO. , considering that “it is time is pressing”.
The entry of a new country into the Atlantic Alliance requires ratification by the parliaments of the 30 member countries, a step that all but Hungary and Turkey have already taken.
The Turkish government has been discussing the issue of Finland and Sweden joining the Atlantic Alliance with several other countries, including the United States, added Çavusoglu, who stressed in this context that he foresees a meeting with his American counterpart, Antony Blinken, on the day 18. of this month, in Washington.
“To those who ask us about this issue, we tell them that when the steps are taken, when the commitments are fulfilled, the accession will be a reality,” insisted the head of Turkish diplomacy.
In this sense, he alluded to the memorandums signed by Turkey with Sweden and Finland at the end of June 2022, in Madrid, on the sidelines of the NATO summit, in which Ankara conditions the ratification of its entry to a series of demands.
Among others, Ankara hopes that the courts of the two countries will hand over several people whom it accuses of terrorism, one of the main demands.
For his part, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan hinted that the Turkish Parliament can wait for the country’s upcoming general elections in June before voting on a new extension of the military pact.
Source: TSF
