Turkey seeks ‘concrete steps’ from Finland, Sweden to accept their NATO membership
Turkish foreign minister says his country has called on Sweden and Finland to take concrete actions and stop supporting terrorist groups in order for Ankara to agree to their NATO membership bid.
Speaking at a news conference on Friday, Mevlut Cavusoglu told reporters that “a concrete step needs to be taken regarding Turkey’s concern.”
“They have to cut the support given to terrorism,” Cavusoglu said, referring to the two Nordic states.
Ending decades of military neutrality, Finland and Sweden formally applied to join NATO last week, in a bid to boost security following Russia’s offensive against Ukraine.
All 30 NATO members must unanimously agree on admitting new members, so that they can benefit from the pact’s collective-security guarantee.
However, Turkey has opposed their bid, accusing the two Nordic countries of giving a safe haven to forces linked to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militant group and followers of Fethullah Gulen, who orchestrated a 2016 coup attempt.
The development came as Swedish and Finnish delegations met with Turkish officials in Ankara on Wednesday to address their objections to their NATO bids.
In a news conference after the talks that lasted about five hours, Turkish presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin said that Turkey will obstruct their process of joining the NATO if the two Nordic states fail to address Ankara’s “security concerns” related to the pair’s support for PKK in Turkey.
Militants of the PKK — designated as a terrorist group by Turkey, the United States, and the European Union — regularly clash with Turkish forces in the Kurdish-dominated southeast of Turkey attached to northern Iraq. The decades-long conflict between Turkey and the autonomy-seeking militant group has led to the death of tens of thousands of people.
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