Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Sunday questioned Sweden and Finland for not extraditing 130 alleged terrorists to Turkey, recalling that it is «a prerequisite» for the two Nordic countries to become NATO members.
«We have told them (Sweden): ‘Look, if you don’t extradite the terrorists you have then we will not be able to ratify this (NATO membership) in our parliament,'» the Turkish leader has asserted at a youth meeting, referring to Sweden and Finland’s promises last June to take a firm stance against terrorists to gain membership in the Atlantic Alliance, Anadolu has reported.
«First of all, they have to extradite about 130 terrorists for their offers to be approved by our Parliament, but unfortunately they have not yet done so,» Erdogan added, emphasizing the deportation of journalist Bulent Kenes, charged for his alleged links to the failed 2016 coup and the network headed by exiled cleric Fethula Gulen.
In this regard, the Turkish president has detailed that Parliament Speaker Mustafa Sentop recently canceled the visit of his Swedish counterpart Andreas Norlen to Turkey in response to the recent «provocations» of the terrorist group’s supporters carried out openly in the Swedish capital Stockholm.
«If they do not take a stand against this situation in Sweden, it could further increase the tension in our ties with Sweden,» he added, a few days after a demonstration in Stockholm directly threatened Erdogan himself, the aforementioned agency has reported.
These declarations come days after the spokesman of the Turkish Presidency, Ibrahim Kalin, reminded the Swedish and Finnish Executives that the current Parliament will change in six months, when elections will be held, which could delay for a month and a half their accession to the Atlantic Alliance.
For Sweden and Finland to complete their NATO membership, ratification needs to be completed by all 30 NATO member states. Hungary has promised to do so in January, while Turkey has not yet set a date.
Erdogan is asking the Swedish authorities for more cooperation in the fight against terrorism – a category into which he puts groups such as the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and the People’s Protection Units (YPG) – but also in general to speed up pending extraditions.
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
