ANKARA: Türkiye and Sweden discussed the implementation of a trilateral agreement on Monday, according to the Turkish Foreign Ministry.
In a phone call, Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu congratulated his Swedish counterpart Tobias Billstrom over his recent appointment as the foreign minister.
The two officials also addressed the trilateral memorandum of understanding that was signed in June. Moreover, Finnish officials are expected to arrive in Ankara on Tuesday to discuss their country’s bid to join NATO.
A delegation from Finland’s Justice Ministry will meet Kasım Çiçek, the head of foreign relations at the Turkish Ministry of Justice. The talks will focus on the extradition of individuals Türkiye regards as terrorists, the report added.
Both Finland and its neighbor Sweden applied for membership in the defense alliance in the wake of Russia’s February invasion of Ukraine, abandoning longstanding policies of military nonalignment. Becoming a NATO member requires the unanimous support of all current members, including Türkiye.
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said Thursday that he had also agreed to meet with Sweden’s new Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson in Ankara. Türkiye has threatened to block the process unless Finland and Sweden meet its demands. In particular, Ankara wants them to crack down on people it considers terrorists.
Türkiye also has called for lifting an arms embargo imposed following its 2018 operation into northern Syria to combat PKK-linked YPG terrorists. Sweden last month said it would lift the embargo, a step seen as aiming to secure Ankara’s approval.
Only the parliaments of Türkiye and Hungary have yet to ratify the accession of Finland and Sweden. Türkiye’s parliament must ratify the country’s approval for Finland and Sweden’s membership for them to join NATO.
Türkiye, Sweden, and Finland signed a trilateral memorandum of understanding at NATO’s June summit in Madrid, which stipulates that the Nordic countries will not provide support to the YPG or the Gülenist Terror Group (FETÖ).
The PKK is listed as a terrorist organization by Türkiye, the European Union, and the United States, and it is responsible for the deaths of 40,000 people, including women, children, and infants. The PKK terrorist group’s Syrian branch YPG also has a presence in Europe.
The Nordic countries also agreed to address Ankara’s pending deportation or extradition requests for terror suspects. Sweden has taken “concrete action” to address Türkiye’s concerns over its NATO membership bid, including stepping up counter-terrorism efforts against PKK-linked militants, Stockholm told Ankara in a letter dated Oct. 6 and seen by Reuters, reports said recently.
The two-page letter gives 14 examples of steps taken by Sweden to show it “is fully committed to the implementation” of the memorandum it signed with Türkiye and Finland in June, which resulted in NATO member Türkiye lifting its veto of their applications to the trans-Atlantic security alliance.
Stockholm and Helsinki deny harboring terrorists but have pledged to cooperate with Ankara to fully address its security concerns, and to lift arms embargoes. Yet Erdoğan said as recently as Oct. 6 that its demands had not yet been met.
In its letter to Türkiye, Sweden said that “concrete action has been taken on all core elements of the trilateral agreement.”
Sweden’s security and counterterrorism police, Sapo, “has intensified its work against the PKK,” and it made “a high-level visit” to Türkiye in September for meetings with the Turkish intelligence agency, the letter said.
The letter was meant to reassure Türkiye of Sweden’s efforts amid ongoing bilateral talks and to encourage ultimate approval of the NATO membership bid, the source added.
According to the letter, Swedish authorities “carried out new analyses of PKK’s role in threats to Sweden’s national security and in organized crime (and) this is likely to lead to concrete results.”
As part of talks over the June memorandum, Türkiye has sought the extradition of 73 people from Sweden and a dozen others from Finland, where it is concerned with other groups.
The letter says Stockholm extradited one Turkish citizen on Aug. 31 upon Ankara’s request, after an Aug. 11 decision, and that a total of four extraditions have been made to Türkiye since 2019. Extraditions were discussed by a Swedish delegation visiting Ankara in early October, according to the letter.
“Sweden is committed to address pending extradition requests of terror suspects expeditiously and thoroughly,” taking into account Turkish intelligence and in accordance with Swedish law and the European Convention on Extradition, the letter said.
Türkiye will continue consultations with Sweden and Finland “to pursue full implementation of the memorandum,” Turkish diplomatic sources told Reuters. However steps “need to be taken … (in) combatting terrorism, prevention and punishment of incitement to terrorism, improvement of security and judicial cooperation,” the sources added.
The parliaments of all 30 NATO member states must approve Sweden and Finland’s bids, which would mark a historic enlargement of the alliance as the war in Ukraine continues.
In a sign that talks were progressing, Sweden’s foreign minister said Friday he expects the last two holdouts, Türkiye and Hungary, to vote soon on its NATO applications.
Turkish broadcasters quoted Erdoğan as saying on Friday that Sweden’s newly appointed Prime Minister Kristersson backs the fight against terrorism and that they would meet to discuss the NATO bid and extraditions.
A day earlier, Kristersson said after meeting with NATO’s secretary-general that his government “will redouble efforts to implement the trilateral memorandum with Finland and Türkiye.” – Agencies
