Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan indicated on Sunday that Ankara could agree to let Finland join NATO before Sweden, amid rising tensions with Stockholm.
“We can give a different message to Finland (on their NATO application) and Sweden will be shocked to see our message. But Finland should not make the same mistake that Sweden did,” Erdogan said in a televised speech broadcast on Sunday.
Sweden and Finland applied to join NATO last year following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and joining required approval from all member states. Turkey and Hungary have not yet ratified the membership of the Nordic countries.
Turkey says Sweden, in particular, houses terrorists from the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), who according to Ankara took up arms against the Turkish state in 1984.
“We gave Sweden a list of 120 individuals and asked them to extradite those terrorists to their country. If you don’t extradite them, sorry for that,” Erdogan told Sweden last June over his NATO Referring to Turkey’s agreement with Finland, he said. Application.