Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson says likelihood that Finland joins NATO military alliance before Sweden had increased, though Swedish membership was only a matter of time
Kristersson called the provocation by PKK supporters"irresponsible" and a possible attempt to"sabotage" the country's bid to enter NATO.
Kristersson said what he and Oscar Stenstrom, Sweden's chief negotiator for NATO accession talks, "have encountered in recent weeks is that the probability that this will happen at different rates has increased." Sweden and Finland formally applied to join NATO last May, abandoning decades of military non-alignment, a decision spurred by Russia's war on Ukraine, which started on February 24, 2022.
To approve their NATO membership bids, Ankara demands the two Nordic countries to take concrete actions to combat terrorist groups PKK and Fetullah Terrorist Organization , the group behind the 2016 defeated coup in Türkiye. Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu recently said that since the signing of a trilateral memorandum in NATO Madrid summit in June 2022, "there has not been any satisfying steps taken by Sweden".
While Türkiye was unsatisfied with the vague approach of Sweden, Ankara postponed a trilateral meeting after Swedish authorities allowed a Danish far-right politician to burn a copy of Islam's holy book, the Quran, outside the Turkish Embassy in Stockholm on January 21.Stockholm reiterated its determination to take the steps required under the trilateral memorandum.
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