The Turkish president has toughened his opposition to Finland and Sweden joining NATO, accusing the two countries of not taking negotiations with Turkey seriously. “The conversations of our delegation with the delegations of Sweden and Finland were not at the level at which we expected,” Recep Tayyip Erdogan said this Sunday.
Erdogan believes that the two Scandinavian countries, in particular Sweden, while welcoming the Kurds associated with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and the People’s Defense Units (YPG), harbor terrorists.
“They allow terrorists to freely walk the streets of Stockholm and provide them with police protection,” the Turkish president said, adding: “As long as Tayyip Erdogan is the leader of the Republic of Turkey, we will not say yes to entry. countries that support terrorism in NATO.
Erdogan was especially outraged according to Turkish newspaper Hurriyet, from an interview given by one of the PKK leaders to Swedish public television this week. Salih Muslim told SVT that he trusted Sweden and that the country would never designate the YPG as a terrorist organization.
For the President of Turkey, this is proof of the seriousness of the negotiations. “They are not honest. We cannot repeat the mistakes of the past with regard to countries that harbored and financed terrorists,” Erdogan said, targeting Greece, which withdrew from the NATO military structure in the late 1970s but retained its membership. Athens reversed this decision in 1980.
“It is incredible and surprising that the head of state has an opinion on the selection of interviewees from an independent editorial,” commented SVT editor Charlotte Fribourg. Swedish Foreign Minister Ann Linde chose not to say: “A number of diplomatic efforts are underway. We will not comment on this matter.”
On Saturday, after meeting with his Finnish counterpart in Washington, the US Secretary of State he was optimistic for fast results. “There is a very strong consensus in NATO about the accession of Finland and Sweden, I am sure that we will do this process quickly,” said Anthony Blinken.
