Sweden’s NATO membership bid, which a couple of months ago seemed slightly possible has now gone completely haywire. Condemning Sweden’s refusal to extradite people allegedly tied to Kurdish militant groups, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has suggested that Ankara may agree to Finland joining Nato, but will not agree to Sweden’s membership of the bloc. “If you absolutely want to join Nato, you will return these terrorists to us,” said Erdogan in his bold remarks.
This poses another major roadblock for Sweden as Turkey holds the power to influence NATO’s decisions and without its nod, Stockholm’s bid will continue to remain in a stalemate.
During his speech, Erdogan said Turkey might now “give a different response concerning Finland,” but added that “Sweden will be shocked”. Nordic countries, Sweden and Finland, applied for NATO membership last year as Russia rolled its tanks inside Ukrainian territory.
Turkey has demanded from Sweden and it seems like without these demands being met, common ground is hard to come by. “We gave Sweden a list of 120 persons and told them to extradite those terrorists in their country,” said Erdogan. “If you don’t extradite them, then sorry about that.”
Though Finland also has Kurds, Sweden’s Kurdish diaspora is larger. This is playing a significant factor in Nato membership talks which Turkey has put in a deadlock presently. Things only got worse with the latest Turkish protests after Rasmus Paludan, a politician from the Danish far-right Stram Kurs party, burnt a copy of the Quran outside the Turkish embassy in Stockholm.
