Turkey’s Erdogan Says No NATO Membership for Sweden at Vilnius Summit

By Staff, Agencies

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has closed the door on Sweden joining NATO at next month’s summit in Vilnius, saying Stockholm hasn’t done enough to uphold its promises as it recently allowed PKK supporters to demonstrate.

Erdogan told journalists accompanying him to Azerbaijan earlier this week that “terrorists” were demonstrating in the streets of Stockholm while NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg had been trying to convince him to accept Sweden's bid for membership of the military alliance.

“While Stoltenberg was expressing these views to us, unfortunately, at that time, terrorists were demonstrating in the streets again in Sweden,” he said. “Now, we cannot approach this work positively within this table.”

Supporters of the Kurdistan Workers' Party [PKK] armed group waved flags and demonstrated against Turkey earlier this month, angering Ankara.

The presence of people linked to the PKK in Sweden has been a major stumbling block for the country’s attempts to join NATO following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Turkey has a veto on any country joining the alliance, and has promised to use it until its demands over the alleged PKK presence in Sweden have been addressed. The PKK has waged a decades-long war against the Turkish state.

In response, Sweden passed a constitutional amendment and has revised laws to enable action against terrorist groups in the country.

Earlier this month, Sweden's top court also approved the extradition to Turkey of a self-declared supporter of the PKK over drug offences.

And on Friday, a Swedish prosecutor charged a Swedish citizen with raising funds for the PKK. The PKK is listed as a terrorist organization by numerous countries, including members of the European Union and the United States.

Senior officials from Finland, Sweden and NATO will meet their Turkish colleagues in Ankara on Wednesday to discuss the progress they’ve made via the Trilateral Memorandum, which requires the two Nordic countries to take steps against terrorism in return for entry to the alliance.

The delegations will meet Akif Cagatay Kilic, who has recently been appointed Erdogan’s new chief foreign policy advisor.

Erdogan told journalists that Sweden must act against terrorists as Turkey has done within its borders, otherwise Ankara cannot tell NATO to allow the Swedes to join as if nothing has happened.

“Kilic tomorrow will give this message to them: ‘This is the opinion of our president, definitely don't expect anything different in Vilnius’,” he added.