(Istanbul) Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Saturday that no progress had been made on Sweden’s desire to join NATO, after a telephone conversation with Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Anderson.
Posted at 12:32 p.m.
“Sweden must take action on such important issues as the fight against terrorism,” he said, again calling for “concrete actions” in response to Turkish demands, according to comments reported by the Turkish presidency.
The Swedish Prime Minister described the conversation as “good”, three days before the start of an Atlantic Alliance summit in Madrid.
“Agree on the importance of making progress ahead of the NATO summit in Madrid next week, where I look forward to meeting President Erdogan and other Allied leaders,” said Mr.me Anderson on Twitter.
In a historic decision, Sweden and Finland applied in mid-May to join the alliance, in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but they came up against an unforeseen blockade by Turkey.
The latter notably accuses Sweden of harboring militants of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which Ankara considers “terrorist”.
Turkey also denounces the presence of supporters of the preacher Fethullah Gülen, whom it suspects of having orchestrated the coup attempt of July 2016.
It also demands the lifting of the blockades of arms exports decided against it by Stockholm after the Turkish military intervention in northern Syria in October 2019, the tightening of Swedish anti-terrorist legislation and the extradition of several people. she calls “terrorists”.
Sweden was one of the first countries to classify the PKK as a “terrorist organization” in the 1980s. But like many other Western countries, it has expressed its support for the YPG, allies of the PKK in Syria which fought the jihadists of the Islamic State group alongside the United States in particular.
The Kurdish cause also enjoys significant support in several Swedish parties, in a country where the Kurdish community or of Kurdish origin is estimated at 100,000 people.
Earlier, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg also spoke with Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Further talks are scheduled for next week “in Brussels and Madrid,” the former Norwegian prime minister said on Twitter.
The Spanish capital will be placed under high security for this summit, which will be attended by American President Joe Biden, his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron, and the heads of government of the United Kingdom and Germany, Boris Johnson and Olaf Scholz. The meeting runs from Tuesday to Thursday.