Turkey’s foreign minister urged Sweden Thursday to take concrete steps to tighten its leash on groups linked to terrorism, saying that Stockholm has not even come “halfway” through fulfilling a list of commitments to secure Ankara’s approval to join NATO. 

“We take note of the steps taken by Sweden’s new government and we welcome them,” Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said at a presser in Ankara with his Swedish counterpart Tobias Billstrom. But he hastened to add that there was little progress on areas crucial to Ankara, such as asset freezes and extradition of people linked to terror-related charges.

Billstrom's is the last in the chain of diplomatic visits from Sweden and Finland as well as one by NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg to persuade Ankara to give its nod to NATO’s Nordic expansion. Ending decades — in the case of Sweden, centuries — of neutrality, the two countries made a bid for NATO after Russia invaded Ukraine. The Turkish objections to starting negotiations with the two Nordic countries have been overcome with a trilateral memorandum of understanding signed at the NATO summit in June. With this document, Helsinki and Stockholm promised to address Ankara’s security concerns and lift their de facto arms embargo against Turkey. But Ankara has been dragging its feet on the final ratification of NATO enlargement, saying that the two countries, particularly Sweden, have a long way to go to implement the three-page MoU.  

“There is a document; it needs to be implemented. We’re not even at the halfway point yet. We're at the beginning,” Cavusoglu said. He explained that the decision by Sweden’s top court to block the extradition of a Turkish journalist had “seriously poisoned” the talks that had been going constructively.