Sweden, Finland must send “terrorists” to Turkey for NATO bidding
Sweden and Finland must deport or extradite up to 130 “terrorists” to Turkey before the Turkish parliament will approve their bid to join NATO, President Tayyip Erdogan said.
The two Nordic states applied last year to join NATO after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but their bid must be approved by all 30 NATO member states. Turkey and Hungary have not yet approved the applications.
Turkey has said that Sweden must first take a clearer stance against what it sees as terrorists, mainly Kurdish militants and a group it blames for an attempted coup in 2016.
“We said look, so if you don’t hand over your terrorists to us, we can’t send it (approval of the NATO application) through parliament anyway,” Erdogan said in comments late Sunday, referring to a joint news conference. he agreed with Sweden’s Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson in November last year.
“For this to pass parliament, first of all, you have to hand over 100, about 130 of these terrorists to us,” Erdogan said.
Finnish politicians interpreted Erdogan’s demands as an angry response to an incident in Stockholm last week in which a picture of the Turkish leader was held up during what appeared to be a small protest.
“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.
Swedish Prime Minister Kristersson said Monday 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.