Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said for the first time that Ankara could accept Finland in NATO without its Nordic neighbor Sweden.

Erdoğan’s comments during a televised meeting with younger voters came days after Ankara was shut down NATO accession negotiations with the two countries.

Its decision threatened to undermine Nato’s hopes of expanding the bloc to 32 countries at a summit scheduled for July in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius.

Finland and Sweden shed decades of military non-alignment and applied to join the defense alliance in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Turkey and Hungary remain the only members that have not ratified the two bids through parliamentary votes.

The Hungarian legislature is is expected to accept both bids in February.

But Erdoğan has dug in his heels heading into a hotly contested election on May 14 in which he seeks to energize his conservative and nationalist support base.

Erdoğan’s main complaint has been Sweden’s refusal to extradite dozens of suspects Ankara links to outlawed Kurdish militants and a failed coup attempt in 2016.

He made a clear distinction on Sunday between the positions that Sweden and Finland have taken in recent months.

– If necessary, we can give another answer regarding Finland. Sweden will be shocked when we give a different answer for Finland, says Erdoğan.

He also repeated his demand that Sweden hand over suspects wanted by Ankara.

“If you absolutely want to join NATO, you will return these terrorists to us,” Erdoğan said.

Sweden has a larger Kurdish diaspora than Finland and a more serious dispute with Ankara.

Both countries have tried to break down Erdoğan’s opposition through months of sensitive talks.

Sweden has approved a constitutional amendment that will enable the country to adopt tougher anti-terror laws that Ankara is demanding.

And both nations have lifted bans on military sales to Turkey that they imposed after its military incursion into Syria in 2019.

But Ankara reacted with fury to a decision by Swedish police to allow a protest in which a right-wing extremist burned a copy of the Koran outside the Turkish embassy in Stockholm earlier this month.

Ankara has also been angered by a Swedish prosecutor’s decision not to bring charges against a Kurdish support group that hung a picture of Erdogan by the ankles outside the Stockholm District Court.

Swedish officials have strongly condemned the protests but defended their country’s broad acceptance of freedom of expression.

The standoff between Ankara and Stockholm prompted Finnish officials to hint for the first time last week that they may be forced to seek NATO membership without Sweden.

The two nations had sought to join the bloc from the start.

– We have to assess the situation, if something has happened that in the longer term would prevent Sweden from moving forward, said Finnish Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto on Tuesday.

But Haavisto also stressed that a common connection remains the “first option”.