Monitoring Desk
LONDON: Sweden’s prime minister has said that negotiations with Turkiye over the NATO membership process are going very positively, adding his previous remarks about talks were misunderstood.
“We have the respect for the fact that Turkiye and every other of the 30 NATO members make their own domestic decisions on whether to ratify or not,” the prime minister told reporters in the capital Stockholm.
He pointed out a “misunderstanding” in his previous remarks on Turkiye’s demands. On Sunday, the Swedish prime minister said that Stockholm could not fulfill all of Ankara’s conditions for approving its plea to join NATO.
However, Kristersson said that he respected Ankara’s right to make its own decision to ratify or not.” We have shown for Turkiye that we are doing exactly what we promised,” he said, adding: “It has been a very rapid process. We feel powerful support from countries.”
Sweden and Finland want to join NATO
The prime minister also said that there are limits to what extent Sweden can do when it comes to extraditing individuals to Ankara, the Politico website reported.
In May 2022, Sweden and Finland formally applied to join the NATO alliance, abandoning decades of military non-alignment, a decision spurred by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which started on February 24.
But Turkiye – a NATO member for over 70 years – voiced objections, accusing the two nations of tolerating and even supporting terror groups, including the Fetullah Terrorist Organization (FETO) and the PKK.
In June, Turkiye and the two Nordic countries signed an MoU at a NATO summit to address Ankara’s legitimate security grievances, paving the way for their eventual membership in the alliance.
