Sweden to live up to terms of NATO deal with Türkiye: PM

VISBY

Sweden will live up to the conditions of a memorandum of understanding agreed with Ankara to overcome Türkiye’s objections to Swedish membership of NATO, Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson said on Aug. 16.

Andersson held a press conference at the The Almedalen Week, also known as “Politician’s Week in Almedalen,” an annual event on Park Almedalen in the city of Visby.

Reminding Okan Kale, the first man to extradite to Türkiye, Anderssen said the decision to extradite a man to Türkiye wanted for fraud was made last week “according to Swedish and international law.”

“We will continue to work that way,” she added.

Sweden’s government said on Aug. 11 it would hand over a Turkish citizen to Ankara, the first known extradition since Türkiye threatened to freeze Stockholm’s bid to join NATO.

The man facing extradition was identified in Swedish court documents as Okan Kale and was convicted in Türkiye of credit card fraud in 2013 and 2016.

He sought asylum in Sweden in 2011 but his request was denied. He was granted refugee status in Italy in 2014. Kale’s name features on a list published in Turkish media of people that Ankara wants extradited from Sweden.

Kale has been held in Swedish custody since December 2021.

Signed in late June in Madrid on the sidelines of the NATO summit, the trilateral agreement stipulates that Sweden and Finland cooperate with Türkiye against all sorts of terrorist organizations, including the PKK, the YPG and the FETÖ, if they want to be a member of the alliance.

The agreement tells Sweden and Finland to take all the measures to stop the terrorists’ activities on their soils for propaganda and fund-raising etc. It also obliges the two Scandinavian countries to extradite terrorists to Türkiye.