ISTANBUL – President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey on Monday said the European Union should pave the way for Turkey to join the bloc before Turkey allows Sweden to join NATO, adding a new condition. could surprisingly thwart the military alliance’s expansion efforts.
Erdogan’s latest request comes a day before the opening of NATO’s two-day annual summit, where leaders, including President Biden, had hoped for approval. consensus from member states. allows Sweden to become the 32nd member.
That outcome seems increasingly unlikely, with Mr Erdogan posing the main obstacle to Sweden’s membership.
“First, clear the way for Turkey to enter the European Union, then we will clear the way for Sweden as we did with Finland,” Erdogan told reporters before heading to the summit. NATO summit.
The leaders of the European Union and NATO member states are unlikely to react positively, as they are separate organizations with many overlapping members but completely different purposes. Turkey applied to join the European Union in 1987, but there has been little progress in its effort since 2016, when the European Parliament vote to suspend accession negotiations while also criticizing the Turkish government’s extensive crackdown on political opponents following the failed coup against Mr.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on Monday that he supported Turkey’s ambitions to join the European Union, but that it was not one of the conditions that Turkish, Swedish officials said and Finland posed last year at the NATO summit in Madrid.
“We need to remember that what we agreed to in Madrid was a specific list of conditions that Sweden had to meet in order to become a full member of the union and that Sweden met these conditions. ,” Mr. Stoltenberg told reporters in Lithuania.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, a member of both the European Union and NATO, said the two issues should not be linked.
“Sweden meets all the requirements to become a NATO member,” Scholz told reporters in Berlin. “The other question is an unrelated question, so I don’t think it should be considered a related issue.”
Sweden applied to join NATO last year, following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. All NATO countries must agree to admit new members, a rule that has given Erdogan immense leverage to demand concessions.
Turkey has accused Sweden of providing a permissive environment for dissidents that Turkey considers terrorists, including pro-Kurdish activists and members of a religious group that Turkey has accused of planning the 2016 coup plot.
In recent months, Sweden has worked to meet Turkey’s demands, amending its constitution, passing new anti-terrorism laws and agreeing to extradite a number of Turkish nationals accused of crimes in Syria. Turkey. But Swedish courts have blocked other extraditions, and Swedish officials have said they cannot override their country’s protections for free speech.
Mr. Erdogan went on to say that Sweden must do more.
A new complication arose late last month after a man openly burned the Koran at a rally in Stockholm on a major Muslim holiday. Mr. Erdogan criticized Sweden for allowing protests and said the Swedish authorities needed to fight Islamophobia, although that was not one of the issues Sweden had agreed with Turkey to prevent. handle.
Hungary is the only NATO member that has not yet approved Sweden’s proposal, but Hungarian officials have said that if Turkey’s position changes, they will not stand in the way of the process. Finland applied at the same time as Sweden, but overcame Türkiye’s initial objections and join the alliance in April.
By linking Turkey’s bid to join the European Union with Sweden’s entry into NATO, Erdogan has thrown another key into the alliance’s negotiations less than 24 hours before the leaders. NATO leaders are scheduled to convene in Vilnius, Lithuania, for their annual summit. On Sunday, President Biden spoke to Erdogan and told him of his “desire to welcome Sweden into NATO as soon as possible,” according to a brief account of the call. provided by the White House.
Before arriving for the summit, Mr. Erdogan said again on Monday that Sweden could not expect to join until it had met all of Turkey’s demands regarding terrorism.
“No one should expect compromise or understanding from me,” he said.
Gulsin Harman And Christopher F. Schuetze contribution report.
