Erdogan warns that Turkey could still block the Nordic NATO push

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday told Sweden and Finland that he could still block their efforts to join NATO if they don’t implement a new accession deal with Ankara.

Erdogan issued his blunt warning at the end of a NATO summit where the US-led alliance officially invited the Nordic countries to join the 30-nation bloc.

The two nations dropped their history of military non-alignment and announced plans to join NATO in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Their offers should be approved quickly until Erdogan raised concerns in May.

He accused the two of providing a safe haven for outlaw Kurdish militants and promoting “terrorism”.

Erdogan also demanded that they lift arms embargoes imposed in response to Turkey’s military incursion into Syria in 2019.

A 10-point memorandum signed by the three sides on Tuesday on the sidelines of NATO’s summit seemed to allay many of Erdogan’s concerns.

Erdogan overruled his objections and then held a cordial meeting with US President Joe Biden, which was followed by a promise to sell new fighter jets to Turkey.

Still, Erdogan told reporters at an impromptu press conference at the end of the summit that the memorandum did not mean Turkey would automatically approve the two countries’ membership.

Proposals from new countries must be approved by all members and ratified by their respective parliaments.

Erdogan warned that the future behavior of Sweden and Finland would determine whether he forwarded their request to the Turkish parliament.

“If they fulfill their duties, we will refer them to Parliament. If they don’t meet them, it’s out of the question,” he said.

A Western diplomatic source in the corridors of the NATO summit accused Erdogan of “blackmail”.

Erdogan delivered his message a day after Turkey announced it would request the extradition of 12 suspects from Finland and 21 from Sweden.

The 33 have all been accused of being either outlawed Kurdish militants or members of a group led by a US-based preacher whom Turkey blames for a failed 2016 coup.

But Erdogan appeared to up the ante on Thursday by noting that Sweden had “promised” to extradite “73 terrorists” to Turkey.

He did not explain when Sweden made this promise or give any other details.

Officials in Stockholm said they didn’t understand Erdogan’s hint but stressed Sweden strictly adheres to the rule of law.

“In Sweden, Swedish law is applied by independent courts,” Justice Minister Morgan Johansson said in a statement to AFP.

“Swedish citizens will not be extradited. Non-Swedish citizens can be extradited at the request of other countries, but only if this is compatible with Swedish law and the European Convention,” said Johansson.

Finnish President Sauli Niinisto said on Wednesday that Erdogan was apparently referring to cases that had already been dealt with by officials and courts.

“I would guess that all of these cases were solved in Finland. Decisions are made, and those decisions are partly made by our courts,” Niinisto told reporters in Madrid.

“I see no reason to resume them.”

Most of Turkey’s demands and previous negotiations concerned Sweden because of its more robust relations with the Kurdish diaspora.

Sweden does not keep official ethnicity statistics, but there are believed to be 100,000 Kurds in a country of 10 million people.

The Brookings Institution warned that the “loose and often aggressive formulation” of the term “terrorist” could cause problems in Turkey in the coming months.

“The complication stems from a definition of terrorism in Turkish law that goes beyond criminalizing participation in acts of violence and violates basic freedom of expression,” the US-based institute said in a report.