The Turkish president has not specified specific conditions for reconsidering the veto and admitting Sweden and Finland to NATO, but he has hinted that the problem lies not so much with the attitude of the two candidate countries as of all Alliance members.
Turkey will ban Sweden and Finland from joining NATO if alliance members continue to support Syria’s Kurdish militia, the YPG, which it considers “terrorists”, and allow other nearby organizations to engage in activism.
“We cannot give the green light to NATO, which is a security organization, to house terrorist organizations,” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said, referring to the activities of Kurdish militants in European countries.
The president regretted that the European Union considers the Kurdish guerrillas in Turkey, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a terrorist organization, but does not extend this classification to the Kurdish militia People’s Protection Units (YPG), operating in northern Syria.
Erdogan stressed that he had repeatedly explained to European leaders in his interviews, supported by documents, that the YPG is a “terrorist organization spawned by the PKK”.
“All over Germany, Sweden, Finland or France, terrorist organizations are holding demonstrations, holding marches, especially in Germany. Their leaders are given security. They are not handed over to us,” the president said.
He added that today he had a lengthy telephone conversation with the Prime Minister of the Netherlands, Mark Rutte, and that he would speak with the governments of the United Kingdom and Finland tomorrow.
He did not specify specific conditions to reconsider the veto and admit Sweden and Finland to NATO, but hinted that the problem lies not so much with the attitude of the two candidate countries, but with that of all members of the Alliance.
In fact, he claims, the United States is the main provider of military support to the YPG-led militias in Syria in their fight against the jihadists of the Islamic State terror group.
Relationship between Sweden and the PKK
Sweden’s government has described the alleged relationship between the Nordic country and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which Turkey has used time and again to veto Sweden’s and Finns’ accession to NATO, as “misinformation” .
“I don’t want to forget that Olof Palme’s (Swedish) government was the first after the Turks to declare the PKK a terrorist organization in 1984,” Swedish Foreign Minister Ann Linde said in a tweet, though she didn’t. did. reference to the YPG.
As he points out, it was later recognized by the European Union in 2002 when the bloc drew up its own list of terrorist organizations, and this is an “unchangeable position”.
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Source: EITB
I’m Wayne Wickman, a professional journalist and author for Today Times Live. My specialty is covering global news and current events, offering readers a unique perspective on the world’s most pressing issues. I’m passionate about storytelling and helping people stay informed on the goings-on of our planet.
