ANKARA, Turkey (AP) Dec,6 — Finland must publicly declare that it’s lifting an arms embargo on Turkey to win Ankara’s approval for its membership to NATO, the Turkish foreign minister said Tuesday. Mevlut Cavusoglu made the comments ahead of a visit by Finland’s Defense Minister Antti Kaikkonen, who will be discussing his nation’s bid to join the military alliance with his Turkish counterpart Hulusi Akar on Thursday.
“The Finnish defence minister’s visit to Turkey is important because we have not yet heard a statement from Finland saying they’ve lifted their arms embargo against us,” Cavusoglu told reporters. “We’re expecting such a statement from there.” Sweden and Finland abandoned their longstanding policies of military nonalignment. They applied for membership in the alliance after Russian forces invaded Ukraine in February, amid concerns that Russia might target them next.
But NATO-member Turkey has been holding up Sweden and Finland’s bids to join the military alliance, accusing the two Nordic countries of ignoring threats to Turkey from Kurdish militants and other groups it considers as terrorists and pressing them to crack down on these groups.
Turkey is also pressuring both countries to lift a de facto ban on arms sales to Turkey. Sweden will lift the arms embargo it imposed on Ankara in 2019 following a Turkish military operation against Kurdish militias in Syria, she announced in September. Turkey does not support membership, accusing the Nordic countries of ignoring threats from Kurdish extremists and other groups they perceive as terrorists. Turkish and Hungarian parliaments have yet to ratify their proposal. Twenty-eight other NATO members have already done so.
