Erdogan maintains same stance on Sweden’s NATO membership

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is preventing Sweden from joining NATO at next month’s summit in Vilnius. Erdogan said Sweden has failed to fulfill its promises by allowing PKK supporters to demonstrate in the streets of Stockholm. He underlined that this happened while he was meeting with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, who was trying to persuade him to accept Sweden’s membership bid.

Speaking to journalists during his visit to Azerbaijan, the Turkish president said that Sweden’s expectations don’t mean they will be met. Above all, he reiterated, Sweden must play its part to ensure that they can live up to their expectations. As a result, Sweden’s application to join the alliance, which has been approved by all NATO allies except Turkey and Hungary, is still pending. Recently, in the run-up to the Vilnius summit, pressure has been mounting on the two veto-holding countries to accept Sweden’s bid in order to give the 32-member alliance the appearance of unity.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg therefore met with Erdogan in Istanbul on 4 June. Commenting on the meeting, Erdogan said: “Unfortunately, while Stoltenberg was expressing his views on the Swedish process, terrorists were gathering in the streets of Sweden. Later, the head of the National Intelligence Organisation, İbrahim Kalin, sent the footage of this demonstration to his Swedish counterpart”. He added that there is no reason for Turkey to give the green light under the current conditions, as the constitutional and legal amendments are not sufficient.

On 14 June, a meeting was held in Ankara to discuss Sweden’s NATO membership once again. In his statement after the meeting, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said the meeting with Erdoğan had been very positive. Although the concrete results of the meeting, which was attended by representatives from Sweden, Finland, Turkey and NATO, have yet to be announced, Stoltenberg said that progress had been made.