Erdogan said Turkey could accept Finland into NATO but not Sweden

Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned this Sunday that they could respond “differently” to Finland’s NATO membership requesta response that will “shock” Sweden.

“We would respond differently to Finland if necessary. Sweden will be shocked when we respond differently to Finland. Finland should not make the same mistake,” Erdogan said during an event with young people in the Turkish province of Bilecik, the news agency reported. anatolian.

Erdogan recalled that he gave Sweden a list of 120 names for their extradition. “YouYou have to extradite these terrorists to be able to join NATO”, he stressed.

Turkey and Hungary remain the only members of the 30-nation Western defense alliance that have not ratified the membership offers of Sweden and Finland.

The Hungarian parliament is expected to approve both offers in February.

But Erdogan has held his own ahead of the hotly contested May 14 presidential election in which he is trying to energize his conservative and nationalist support base.

Sweden and Finland presented their applications for NATO membership in a coordinated manner last May, but Turkey, as a member of the Alliance, has the right to veto, which is why it has taken the opportunity to demand that Stockholm persecute members of the party-militia Kurdish Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

Erdogan’s main complaint has been Sweden’s refusal to extradite dozens of suspects Ankara links to outlawed Kurdish militants and a failed 2016 coup attempt.

In June Turkey and the two Scandinavian countries signed a memorandum in Madrid in which they undertook to satisfy Ankara’s legitimate security concerns.

On January 8, the Swedish Prime Minister, ulf kristerssonI declared that the Turkish government is imposing a series of demands on his country to join NATO that Sweden cannot and does not want to comply with.

“They want things that we cannot and do not want to give them and now the decision falls on the Turks,” declared the prime minister during the People and Defense conference held in Stockholm and reported by the newspaper aftonbladet.

The tension worsened after the burning on Friday of a copy of the Koran in front of a mosque in Denmark at the hands of the Swedish-Danish far-right Rasmus Paludanparty leader Stram Kurs (Hard Line). The previous Friday he burned another copy in Stockholm.

“Have they erased the Quran by burning a copy of the Quran in Sweden? They have only shown how ignoble they are. Denmark has done the same,” Erdogan said.

Paludan announced that he will burn a copy of the Koran every Friday until Sweden joins NATO. So far it has only achieved the condemnation of the majority of Muslim countries.

With information from Europa Press

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