Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said amid rising tensions between Stockholm and Ankara, state news agency Anadolu reported. Ahn said Turkey’s response to Finland’s NATO membership could be “different” from Sweden’s.
Both Sweden and Finland applied to join the 30-member military alliance after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sparked fresh security concerns in the region. All NATO members, including Turkey, must accept their applications for approval.
“If necessary, we might react differently to Finland. Sweden will be shocked when we react differently to Finland,” Erdogan said during a meeting with young people in the country’s Bilečík province. Say.
Turkey has previously urged Sweden to take a clearer stance against what it sees as terrorists, mainly Kurdish militants and groups it blamed for the failed 2016 coup.
Erdogan said Ankara had provided Sweden with a list of 120 people to be extradited to Turkey, according to Anadolu.
“You need to extradite these terrorists so you can enter NATO,” Erdogan said on Sunday.
Last week, Ankara called for a postponement of the February meeting between Turkey, Sweden and Finland, Turkish state broadcaster TRT Haber said, citing unnamed diplomatic sources.
More background: Relations between Turkey and Sweden took a further blow this month after a rally outside the Turkish embassy in Stockholm in which an anti-immigration politician lit a copy of the Koran. The incident sparked outrage in Ankara, where protesters took to the streets and burned a Swedish flag outside the Swedish embassy in response.