The Turkish president set a new condition for Finland and Sweden’s NATO membership.
Swedish and Finland must hand over 130 terrorists to Turkey in order for Turkey to accept the countries’ membership in the military alliance NATO, the president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said on Sunday, according to Turkish media. A Swedish newspaper tells about it Expressen.
Turkey has repeatedly demanded that Finland and Sweden return people it considers terrorists. The numbers demanded by Turkey have varied, but Sweden has been repeatedly demanded to return 73 people.
Turkey has set several demands on both Finland and Sweden as a condition for the ratification of the countries’ NATO membership. The realization of membership still depends on the ratifications of Turkey and Hungary. Hungary has promised to handle the ratification at the beginning of February, but Turkey has never given a timetable for the ratification.
Turkey has expressed that it still expects concrete steps from Finland and Sweden, but the country has not specified what additional measures it requires from Finland in relation to terrorism.
On Friday Erdoğan’s spokesman Ibrahim Kalin said that the Swedish parliament must first make the required changes to the law in order for the Turkish parliament to ratify Sweden’s NATO membership.
Kalin estimates that the Swedish law changes will take at least six months. Turkey has demanded that Sweden, among other things, tighten its terrorism laws.
President Sauli Niinistö said a Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheterin in an interview published on Saturday, he believes that the ratification of NATO membership must wait until after Turkey’s elections. Parliamentary and presidential elections will be held in Turkey in June.
According to Niinistö, it is also not possible to see a situation where Finland would become a member of NATO before Sweden.
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