Erdogan unswayed by Swedish PM's charm offensive
The Swedish prime minister met the Turkish president in Ankara amid the ongoing NATO dispute over Sweden and Finland's accession to the alliance.
Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson emerged from talks with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan without the guarantees he was seeking for Turkey’s approval of Sweden’s NATO membership. In a joint news conference with Kristersson, Erdogan made it clear that unless Sweden fulfilled its commitments to address Turkey’s security concerns under the terms of a trilateral memorandum signed in Madrid, such approval would not be forthcoming.
Sweden and Finland applied for membership in the Western security bloc following Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine. Turkey and Hungary are the sole countries that have not ratified their accession. Turkey has a laundry list of demands, including returning dozens of people it has accused of terrorism and severing ties with a Syrian Kurdish group backed by the United States.
Erdogan aired satisfaction that Sweden had eased restrictions on arms sales that were imposed following Turkey’s 2019 invasion of Syria to fight Kurdish militants. But he complained that terrorist organizations were permitted to hold demonstrations in Sweden and appear on television. “When our citizens see these terrorists walking the boulevards of Sweden and Finland with terrorist rags in their hands, they seek an explanation,” he said.
“Sweden wants NATO membership for its own security,” Erdogan said. But “Turkey wants a Sweden that helps alleviate our security concerns."
