Turkey’s Erdogan accuses Sweden and Finland of supporting terrorism, potentially thwarting NATO’s efforts
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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused Sweden and Finland of supporting terrorism on Saturday, indicating that Ankara is unlikely to give up its opposition to the Scandinavian countries joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in the midst of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“As long as Tayyip Erdogan is the head of the Republic of Turkey, we can definitely not say ‘yes’ to countries that support NATO-affiliated terrorism, Erdogan told reporters when he returned from Azerbaijan on Saturday.
Sweden and Finland formally applied to join NATO earlier this month, which would represent a historic expansion of the Western military alliance.
While NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has said that the two Nordic countries are welcome, all 30 member nations must unanimously approve a country’s application to join the alliance.
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Turkey’s opposition to Sweden and Finland’s entry into NATO stems from the Scandinavian countries’ alleged support for members of the militant group Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which Turkey and the United States regard as a terrorist group.
The PKK, which wants to establish an ethnic homeland for the Kurds, has been at war with Turkey since 1984.
Sweden and Finland also stopped arms sales to Turkey in 2019 after the country launched an invasion of northern Syria.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Friday that he is convinced that Turkey will be able to resolve its differences with Sweden and Finland.
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“The United States fully supports the accession of Finland and Sweden, and I continue to be confident that both countries will soon become NATO allies,” Blinken said at a news conference with Finnish Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto.
“Finland and Sweden speak directly to Turkey and work through some of the concerns that Turkey has raised and find ways to address them.”
The process of joining NATO usually takes eight months to a year, but the alliance has indicated that it wants to speed up approval in the midst of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
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Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia saw Finland’s entry into NATO as a “threat”, although Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov later downplayed the move as making “no major difference”.
Reuters contributed to this report.