“Leave your terrorists over”: Turkey steps up pressure on NATO hopefuls Sweden and Finland
Sweden and Finland must deport around 130 “terrorists” to Turkey before Ankara will approve their bid to join NATO, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Monday.
Turkey has blocked bids by the two Nordic states to join the Western military alliance since they applied in May. According to NATO rules, all 30 members must agree before a new one can be adopted.
Turkey wants Sweden and Finland to meet several political demands, including the extradition of Kurds it considers terrorists and alleged links to the PKK, critics of Erdogan and the lifting of an arms export ban on Ankara.
Hungary has also not yet approved their NATO applications.
“We said look, so if you don’t hand over your terrorists to us, we can’t pass it [approval of the NATO application] through parliament anyway,” Erdogan said in comments late Sunday.
“For this to pass parliament, first of all, you have to hand over 100, about 130 of these terrorists to us.”
Critics have warned against making political concessions to Turkey, saying any expulsions would be legally dubious and violate the human rights of those affected, as well as each country’s sovereignty.
In January, Sweden said that Turkey had demands that it could not – and would not – meet.
Finnish politicians interpreted Erdogan’s comments as an angry reaction to an incident in Stockholm last week in which a picture of the Turkish leader was strung up during a small protest by a Kurdish group.
“It’s time for Erdogan to resign before he ends up hanged in Taksim,” read the caption of one video, referring to the main square in Istanbul, Turkey’s capital.
“This must have been a reaction, I think, to the events of the last few days,” Finnish Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto told YLE.
Haavisto said he was not aware of any new official demands from Turkey.
In response to the incident in Stockholm, Turkey canceled a planned visit to Ankara by Swedish Speaker Andreas Norlen, who instead came to Helsinki on Monday.
“We emphasize that we in Finland and in Sweden have freedom of speech. We cannot control it,” the speaker of the Finnish parliament, Matti Vanhanen, told reporters at a joint press conference with Norlen.
On Monday, Swedish Prime Minister Kristersson said separately that his country was in a “good position” to secure Turkey’s ratification of its NATO bid.
Erdogan’s spokesman Ibrahim Kalin said on Saturday that time was running out for Turkey’s parliament to ratify the bids ahead of presidential and parliamentary elections expected in May.