Turkey demands ’concrete steps’ to back Nordics’ NATO bids

ANKARA

Turkey would not agree to the two Nordic countries joining NATO unless concrete steps are taken to address Ankara’s objections, presidential spokesperson İbrahim Kalın said after talks with Swedish and Finnish officials on May 25.

“We have very clearly expressed our message that the process cannot progress unless Turkey’s security concerns are met with concrete steps within a certain timetable,” Kalın said at a press conference after the trilateral meeting in Ankara.

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s chief foreign policy adviser and spokesperson, Kalın, and Deputy Foreign Minister Sedat Önal hosted the Swedish delegation headed by state secretary Oscar Stenstrom and the Finnish delegation headed by Foreign Ministry undersecretary Jukka Salovaara on May 25.

Sweden and Finland formally applied to join NATO following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. NATO allies, except for Turkey, welcomed their appeal. Turkey, however, citing their ties with the PKK and other anti-Turkey terror groups, objected to their entry into the alliance.

During the meeting, Ankara’s expectation focused on taking concrete steps towards the presence of terrorist organizations in the organizational, financial and propaganda-oriented media in these countries, Kalın said and noted that Ankara conveyed the information and documents regarding this matter in detail.

In this context, Ankara reminded its extradition requests from the two countries in the last 10 years, he said and added that Turkey has not received a positive response to any of these requests.

“When we examined the reasons for these and put the files and reports in front of them, we saw that there was no forensic or legal justification that would convince us,” he said.

Turkey also expressed its expectation that all kinds of defense industry sanctions against Turkey should be lifted immediately, Kalın stated. Ankara observed “positive attitude towards the lifting of sanctions on defense industry products.”

The Finnish and Swedish officials have taken notes to convey Turkey’s expectations to their capitals, and the negotiations will continue according to their response, the spokesperson said.

Recalling the upcoming NATO summit in June, Kalın said: “I must state that we are not under time pressure to raise this issue until that summit. We are determined to ensure that the process proceeds solidly and that it progresses depending on the steps taken to meet Turkey’s security concerns.”

Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu had a phone talk with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg on May 26.