Sweden has still not won Turkey’s support to join NATO ahead of the military alliance’s summit in Vilnius next month, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said Wednesday — pouring cold water on rising hopes that a deal might be near.
“Sweden’s expectations don’t mean we’ll follow them,” Erdoğan said during a trip to Azerbaijan, according to Bloomberg and Turkish media, referring to Stockholm’s aspirations of becoming a NATO member before the alliance’s annual summit in July.
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, adds Middle East Eye.
Erdoğan’s comments were conspicuously timed, coming just as senior officials from Turkey, Sweden and Finland met in Ankara to discuss Turkey’s concerns over Sweden’s NATO bid.
Officials had been privately expressing optimism going into the meeting, but there was more caution by the day’s end, as the meeting broke out without a clear signal of progress.
Still, NATO officials put a positive spin on the talks. Stian Jenssen, director of NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg’s private office, called them “good and constructive” in a statement.
“Progress is being made, and the atmospherics were positive,” he added.
Sweden’s NATO bid has been in limbo for months. The Nordic nation initially applied for membership in the wake of Russia launching its war in Ukraine. It applied at the same time as Finland, with the duo initially aiming to join the alliance together.
Eventually, the two countries had to drop that plan, as Finland was eventually ushered in and Sweden was left out in the cold.
The problem has been mostly Turkey. The country has been dragging its feet on approving Sweden’s bid, citing concerns about Stockholm’s support for Kurdish groups which Ankara considers to be terrorist entities — including the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has a following in Sweden but is banned in Turkey.
In late May, the Swedish government said it had updated its domestic terrorism legislation to include a veiled reference to the PKK, and made all the necessary commitments to ease Ankara’s concerns — but Erdoğan was still unconvinced.
“Sweden must first of all eradicate what this terrorist organization is doing,” the Turkish president said in his remarks cited on Wednesday. “In this picture, we cannot approach this positively.”
Sweden — and Ukraine’s — accession to NATO will be discussed at the alliance’s next summit, which will be held in Vilnius, Lithuania on July 11-12.
Later on Wednesday, Sweden’s chief negotatior said discussions with Turkey will continue.
“It’s my job to persuade our counterpart that we have done enough. I think we have,” Oscar Stenstrom said.
“But Turkey is not ready to make a decision yet and thinks that they need to have more answers to the questions they have.”
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