Turkey will oppose Sweden and Finland joining NATO, the country’s president flatly stated in a video released Thursday.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have told our relevant friends we would say \u2018no\u2019 to Finland and Sweden\u2019s entry into NATO, and we will continue on our path like this,\u201d President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told a group of Turkish youth in the video for Commemoration of Atat\u00fcrk, Youth and Sports Day, a national holiday.<\/p>\n
Turkey\u2019s approval of Finland and Sweden’s application to join the Western military alliance is crucial because NATO makes decisions by consensus. Each of its 30 member countries has the power to veto a membership bid.<\/p>\n
Erdogan has said Turkey’s objection stems from grievances with Sweden’s – and to a lesser degree with Finland\u2019s – perceived support of the banned Kurdistan Workers\u2019 Party, or PKK, and an armed group in Syria that Turkey sees as an extension of the PKK. The conflict with the PKK has killed tens of thousands of people since 1984.<\/p>\n
Turkey also accuses Sweden and Finland of harboring the followers of Fethullah Gulen, a U.S.-based Muslim cleric whom the Turkish government blames for 2016 military coup attempt.<\/p>\n
A full recording of Erdogan’s conversation with the youth for the holiday that marks the beginning of the Turkish War of Independence in 1919 is expected to be released Thursday night. It was not immediately clear when the conversation took place.<\/p>\n
In the remarks made available earlier Thursday, Erdogan accused the two prospective NATO members and especially Sweden of being \u201ca focus of terror, home to terror.\u201d He claimed their links to terror organizations meant they should not be part of the trans-Atlantic alliance.<\/p>\n
Turkish officials, including the president, also have pointed to arms restrictions on Turkey as a reason for Ankara\u2019s opposition to the two countries becoming part of NATO.<\/p>\n
Several European countries, including Sweden and Finland, restricted arms exports to Turkey following the country\u2019s cross-border operation into northeast Syria in 2019 with the stated goal of clearing the border area of Kurdish militants.<\/p>\n
Turkey says the Syrian Kurdish People\u2019s Defense Units, or YPG, is directly linked to the PKK was frustrated by American support for them in fighting the Islamic State group.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Turkey will oppose Sweden and Finland joining NATO, the country’s president flatly stated in a video released Thursday. \u201cWe have told our relevant friends we would say \u2018no\u2019 to Finland and Sweden\u2019s entry into NATO, and we will continue on our path like this,\u201d President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told a group of Turkish youth in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":261405,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[5934,7430,5933,2442,1385],"class_list":{"0":"post-261399","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-finland","9":"tag-nato-bid","10":"tag-sweden","11":"tag-tayyip-erdogan","12":"tag-turkey"},"yoast_head":"\n