Turkey “wants things we can’t give them,” criticizes Sweden

A new episode in the diplomatic confrontation between Stockholm and Ankara on Sweden’s accession to NATO. “Turkey also confirms that we have done what we said we will do, but it also says that it wants things that we cannot and do not want to provide,” denounced Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Christson, while discussing his country’s accession process to NATO during the Defense and Security Conference in the presence of the Secretary-General NATOJens Stoltenberg.

“We are convinced that turkey He said before making a decision, we don’t know when, the decision is in Turkey’s camp. At the end of December, Ankara indicated “positive measures” it had taken StockholmTurkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said at the time, but demanded “other important steps” to remove his objections to Sweden joining NATO. These statements came a few days after the Swedish Supreme Court refused to extradite journalist Bulent Kines, at the request of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The Swedish Prime Minister, Ulf Christerson, made one of his first international trips to Sweden Ankara, early November, in an attempt to lift the Turkish veto. Only the Turkish and Hungarian parliamentarians did not ratify the accession of Sweden, as well as Finland, to NATO. On the sidelines of Sunday’s conference, the head of Finnish diplomacy reaffirmed that his country will join NATO at the same time as its neighbor. “Finland is in no hurry to join NATO that we can’t wait for Sweden to get the green light,” Pekka Haavisto told the press.