Monitoring Desk
STOCKHOLM: Sweden is confident that Turkiye will approve its application to join the NATO military alliance but cannot fulfil all the conditions Ankara has set for its support, the prime minister of Sweden said on Sunday.
“Turkiye both confirms that we have done what we said of doing, but they also say that they want things that we do not want to give them,” Sweden’s Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson told a defence conference.
Sweden and Finland signed a three-way agreement with Turkiye in 2022 to overcome Ankara’s objections to their membership in NATO.
Sweden intends to join NATO
They submitted an application in May 2022 to join NATO in response to the Ukraine war, but Turkiye objected and accused both countries of harbouring militants, including the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party.
One key point has been the extraditions of people Turkiye regards as terrorists. Ankara expressed displeasure with a decision late last year from Sweden’s top court to stop a request to extradite a journalist with alleged association to Islamic scholar Fetullah Gulen, blamed by Turkiye for an attempted coup.
