Sweden and Finland must deport or extradite up to 130 'terrorists' to Turkey before the Turkish parliament will approve their bids to join NATO, President Tayyip Erdogan said
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan attends a ceremony to mark an increase in capacity at a natural gas storage facility in Silivri near Istanbul, Turkey, December 16, 2022. REUTERS/Umit Bektas/File Photo
The two Nordic states applied last year to join NATO following Russia's invasion of Ukraine but their bids must be approved by all 30 NATO member states. Turkey and Hungary have yet to endorse the applications. "We said look, so if you don't hand over your terrorists to us, we can't pass it through the parliament anyway," Erdogan said in comments late on Sunday, referring to a joint press conference he held with Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson last November.
Finnish politicians interpreted Erdogan's demand as an angry response to an incident in Stockholm last week in which an effigy of the Turkish leader"This must have been a reaction, I believe, to the events of the past days," Finland's foreign minister Pekka Haavisto told public broadcaster YLE.In response to the incident in Stockholm, Turkey cancelled a planned visit to Ankara of the Swedish speaker of parliament, Andreas Norlen, who instead came to Helsinki on Monday.
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