Turkish court jails PKK terrorist extradited by Sweden
A Turkish court jailed a convicted PKK terrorist a day after Sweden extradited him as part of a memorandum signed in June at a NATO summit to address Ankara’s legitimate security concerns, paving the way for their eventual membership in the bloc.
Mahmut Tat was sentenced to more than six years in prison for being a member of the PKK terrorist group in Turkey. He fled to Sweden in 2015, but Stockholm rejected his asylum application.
Tat arrived in Istanbul on Friday evening after Sweden detained and extradited himAnadolu Agency (AA) reported.
Turkish police arrested him shortly after arriving at Istanbul airport and referred him to a court on Saturday, which sent him to prison, the news agency said.
Finland and Sweden ended decades of military non-alignment and sought to join NATO in May after Russia invaded Ukraine.
The decision requires consensus within the US-led defense alliance, but only Türkye and Hungary have yet to ratify their membership.
Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu held trilateral talks with his Swedish and Finnish counterparts on the sidelines of a NATO meeting in Bucharest this week.
“The statements (coming from Sweden) are good, the determination is good but we need to see concrete steps,” Çavuşoğlu said.
Ankara has said it expects Stockholm to take action on issues such as the extradition of criminals and the freezing of terrorist assets.
Turkey and the two Nordic countries signed a memorandum in June at a NATO summit to address Ankara’s legitimate security concerns, paving the way for their eventual membership in the alliance.
According to the memorandum, Finland and Sweden give their full support to Türkiye to counter threats to the country’s national security. Helsinki and Stockholm should therefore not give support to the PKK terrorist group’s Syrian offshoot, the YPG, or the Gülenist Terror Group (FETÖ) – the group behind the 2016 coup attempt in Türkiye.
In its more than 40-year campaign of terror against Turkey, the PKK – listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States and the European Union – has been responsible for the deaths of over 40,000 people, including women, children and infants.
Turkish officials, including President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, have warned that Türkiye will not give the nod to Sweden and Finland’s membership until the memorandum is implemented.
Unanimous consent of all 30 existing allied countries is required for a country to join NATO.
