NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg defended Tuesday that Sweden and Finland are complying with the agreement signed with Turkey to join NATO and reiterated that the extraditions of Kurdish individuals requested by Ankara are a matter for the Swedish courts to decide.
Speaking at a press conference after the NATO foreign ministers’ meeting in Bucharest, Romania, NATO’s political chief stressed that Sweden and Finland are making progress on the anti-terrorism agreement sealed with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the margins of the Madrid summit.
«As for individual decisions on expulsions and extraditions this is up to the Swedish courts and there is rule of law, politicians decide the laws but in the end it is the evidence that goes to a court to decide an extradition, it is how democratic states work,» he stressed.
The former Norwegian prime minister thus insisted that Stockholm and Helsinki are complying and recalled that Sweden has changed anti-terror laws, is expelling people linked to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and has established a trilateral mechanism to deal with terrorist threats. During his trip to Ankara in early November, Stoltenberg called on the Turkish authorities to unblock Sweden’s and Finland’s NATO membership by defending the security commitment made by both Scandinavian countries.
Allied sources have indicated that there are intense contacts on the part of several NATO members to unblock the accession of Sweden and Finland to the organization and soon complete the ratification of the accession protocols. The ‘yes’ of all the allies is necessary and so far all have ratified in record time except Hungary and Turkey.
The issue has an internal reading in Turkey, immersed in the campaign for the June presidential elections in which Erdogan aspires to renew his mandate. The leader himself has hinted that he may delay the issue until after the elections, i.e. summer 2023. The sources consulted recognize that there is a «window of opportunity» at the beginning of the year, when the ‘green light’ from Hungary is expected, and that it will be difficult to make progress once spring comes and the Turkish elections approach.
THREE SIDE MEETING The Turkish Foreign Minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu, held a meeting with his Swedish and Finnish counterparts, Tobias Billstrom and Pekka Haavisto, respectively, on Tuesday on the sidelines of the meeting in Bucharest.
As reported by Cavusoglu himself in his official profile on the social network Twitter, on the table have been the steps taken by the parties for the implementation of the aforementioned agreement reached in Madrid.
The Turkish diplomatic representative stressed that Ankara has underlined its «hopes» that the Nordic countries will fulfill their part of the deal and thus Turkey will be able to ratify the accession of Sweden and Finland to NATO.
