STOCKHOLM: Sweden is confident Turkey will accept its request to join the NATO military alliance, but not meet all the conditions Ankara has set for its support, Sweden’s prime minister said. said on Sunday.
“Turkey both confirms that we have done what we said, but they also say that they want things that we do,” Prime Minister Alf Kristerson told a defense think tank conference in Sweden. Can’t or don’t want to give them.”
Finland and Sweden signed a trilateral agreement with Turkey in 2022 aimed at overcoming Ankara’s objections to membership of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
They applied to join NATO in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in May, but Turkey objected and accused the countries of harboring militants, including the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party.
At a news conference later on Sunday, Kristersen said demands that Sweden was unable or unwilling to meet were outside the scope of the tripartite memorandum.
“From time to time, Turkey mentions people they want to see extradited to Sweden. I have said that these issues are handled within Swedish law,” he said.
Ankara expressed dismay last year at Sweden’s top court’s decision to block an extradition request for a journalist with alleged links to Islamic scholar Fethullah Gulen, whom Turkey accuses of plotting a coup.