Sweden’s foreign minister says that NATO’s talks with Turkey are going well
Sweden and Finland applied in May to join NATO in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but faced objections from Turkey, which accused the Nordic countries of harboring militants, including from the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
“It’s going well, we had an excellent meeting today,” Foreign Minister Tobias Billström told Reuters after meeting Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu in Ankara.
At a press conference after the meeting, Cavusoglu acknowledged that Sweden had taken steps to meet the terms of a memorandum between the three countries but said more needed to be done.
Billström said Sweden had already made good progress and said tougher anti-terror laws that will come into force on January 1 in Sweden had been welcomed by Ankara.
“It is not surprising that Turkey says there are more things that need to be done. We are not there yet, these things need to be implemented first, but we have taken many steps,” Billström said, adding that Sweden had also raised an arm. export embargo to Turkey.
The NATO application has so far been ratified by 28 of the 30 member states. Hungary has said its parliament will approve the application in early 2023. Ankara says a decision could come after the June elections.
“We hope that we can become members at the NATO summit in Vilnius at the latest in July,” said Billström. “Our goal is to have the application ratified by the Turkish parliament well before then,” he said.
A sticking point has been extraditions of people Turkey considers terrorists, and Cavusoglu lamented a decision earlier this week, when Sweden’s highest court rejected a request from Ankara to extradite a journalist with alleged links to Islamic scholar Fetullah Gulen, whom Turkey accused of an attempted coup. .
Billström said Sweden had an independent judiciary and there was nothing the government could do to change such decisions.
“Our courts are bound by Swedish and international laws, including the European Convention on Extradition, which Turkey has also signed, I might add,” he said.
(Reporting by Johan Ahlander)
By Johan Ahlander