Ankara (AFP) Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Sunday, for the first time, that Turkey could accept Finland into NATO without its Nordic neighbor Sweden.
Erdogan’s comments during a videoconference with young voters came days after Turkey suspended NATO accession talks with the two countries.
Their decision threatened to dash NATO’s hopes of expanding the bloc to 32 countries at its planned summit in July in the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius.
Finland and Sweden have abandoned decades of military non-alignment and applied to join the U.S.-led defense alliance in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Turkey and Hungary are the only member states whose parliamentary votes have failed to ratify two of his candidatures. Hungarian lawmakers are expected to approve both proposals in February.
But Erdogan is heading into his hot May 14 election campaign as he seeks to strengthen his conservative and nationalist base of support.
Erdogan’s main complaint concerns Sweden’s refusal to extradite dozens of suspects, which Ankara has linked to banned Kurdish fighters and the 2016 coup attempt ended in failure.
On Sunday, he made a clear distinction between Sweden and Finland’s positions in recent months.
He said, “If you want, I can give you a different answer for Finland. If you give Finland a different answer, Sweden will be shocked,” Erdogan said.
He also reiterated calls on Sweden to extradite suspects wanted by the Turkish government.
“If you really want to join NATO, give these terrorists back to us,” Erdogan said.
Sweden has more of the Kurdish diaspora than Finland and has a more serious conflict with Ankara.
The two countries have tried to break through Erdogan’s resistance in months of difficult negotiations. Sweden has agreed to a constitutional amendment that would allow it to enact the tougher anti-terrorism laws sought by the Turkish government.
And both countries have lifted a ban on the sale of military materials to Turkey imposed after the 2019 military invasion of Syria.
But Ankara reacted angrily to the Swedish police’s decision to allow a protest that right-wing extremists burned copies of the Koran outside the Turkish embassy in Stockholm earlier this month.
Ankara was also outraged by the Swedish prosecutor’s decision not to bring charges against a Kurdish aid group that hung a portrait of Erdogan by its ankles in front of the Stockholm City Court.
Swedish authorities have strongly condemned the protests, but defended the widespread acceptance of freedom of expression in their country. Finnish officials hinted for the first time last week that the standoff between Ankara and Stockholm could force them to seek NATO membership without Sweden.
Both countries have been aiming to join from the beginning.
Finnish Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto said last Tuesday that “the situation needs to be assessed whether something happened that would prevent Sweden’s long-term survival”.
However, Haavisto also stressed that joint accession remains the “first option”.
