The negotiations held so far by Sweden and Finland with Turkey for Ankara to lift its veto against the entry of those Nordic countries andn NATO have not workedTurkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said, the NTV network reported today.
(Read here: NATO chief says Putin made a strategic mistake by invading Ukraine)
Consequently, Turkey will continue to block this expansion of the Atlantic Alliance, Erdogan stressed in statements to Turkish journalists who accompanied him last Saturday on his return flight from a visit to Azerbaijan.
The talks started last Wednesday by two delegations from Helsinki and Stockholm with a Turkish delegation “unfortunately have not been at the level that was expected,” said the Turkish president.
“They have expectations, but they haven’t taken the steps that we think are necessary,” he added. “Even during this process, there are terrorists walking the streets of Stockholm, protected by the police,” the president said.
“As long as Tayyip Erdogan is at the head of the republic of Turkey, we will not say yes to the entry into NATO of countries that support terrorism,” the president insisted. He clarified, however, that “it is not only about Sweden and Finland: Germany makes the same mistake, Holland makes it, France makes it, there is no difference.”
Since Sweden and Finland announced, in the middle of this month, their intention to join NATOErdogan has warned that he will veto their accession – which must be approved unanimously in the Alliance – if these countries continue to host militants from the Kurdish movements that Ankara considers terrorists.
The European Union defines Turkey’s Kurdish guerrilla group, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), as a terrorist group, but Ankara complains that member countries still do not extradite people Turkey considers linked to that armed group.
Also, Ankara has been unsuccessfully demanding for years that the EU also classify the Kurdish militias in Syria as a terrorist groupthe People’s Protection Units (YPG), for their links with the PKK.
“The same day we spoke (with the Nordic delegations in Ankara), the terrorist Salih Müslim came out to speak on Swedish public television,” Erdogan denounced, referring to one of the leaders of the Kurdish-Syrian PYD party, the political arm of the YPG.
On the other hand, the president criticized that the US bases in the territory of Greece (another NATO member) “are used against Turkey” and assured that he will not speak to the Greek Prime Minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, for his “hostile” speech. in Washington last week.
As we have always said, one night we will suddenly descend on those hills; is what we should do.
Erdogan also reiterated his warning that Turkey will soon launch a new military operation in northern Syria to control territories now dominated by Kurdish militias, but did not specify the time frame of this plan.
On the afternoon of this Sunday, Erdogan repeated this message in a massive ceremony at the former Atatürk airport in Istanbul, where he planted a tree, thus inaugurating the works to convert the space into a public park.
“We are fighting the terrorists in northern Syria. We will continue until we uproot them,” the president promised before a crowd that he himself estimated at more than half a million people.
EFE
More world news
– Presidential elections: this is how election day goes abroad
– Moscow and kyiv, further than ever in their negotiations
– Stampede in New York: several injured after panic over false shooting
#Turkey #continue #block #Sweden #Finland #joining #NATO