Erdogan announces Finland’s accession to NATO

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced this Friday that he is giving the green light to Finland’s NATO membership, while accession talks with Sweden will continue.

This statement was made by the President of Turkey together with his Finnish counterpart Sauli Niinisto at a press conference in Ankara.

“We will start the process of transferring Finland’s NATO accession protocol to the parliament,” Erdogan said, adding that he hoped the process could be completed before the parliamentary and presidential elections scheduled for May 14.

“I signed the protocol and sent it to the parliament. I hope that this process will be completed before the elections”, said the President.

Erdogan’s party, the Islamist AKP, in coalition with the nationalist MHP, has a majority in parliament and, moreover, the opposition does not oppose Finland’s entry into the Atlantic alliance either, so passing the chamber would be a simple formality.

“Turkey is one of the biggest supporters of NATO’s open door policy. We have seen that Finland has taken sincere steps to fulfill the promises in the Tripartite Memorandum of Madrid (signed last July),” Erdogan noted, adding that Ankara saw the need to separate the Swedish process from the Finnish one, not to attend. Stockholm is asking the Turks to extradite people it considers linked to terrorist organizations, especially from the Kurdish region.

“We are not against Sweden. But Sweden opened its arms to terrorists, opened its streets for them. I told the Prime Minister of Sweden to send us 120 terrorists. Since they were not given to us, we cannot have a positive attitude towards them. This does not happen in Finland, and therefore our position is positive”, said the Turkish President.

Niinisto thanked the host for his gesture, but recalled that Sweden should also join the alliance. “Today, with the signatures, the Turkish Parliament begins the ratification process. Thank you very much. We have a neighbor, which is Sweden, and Finland’s entry into NATO is impossible without Sweden,” said the Finnish president.

“I welcome Turkey’s decision to proceed with Finland’s ratification,” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said. “The most important thing is that both Finland and Sweden quickly became full members of NATO, not that they joined at the same time,” he added.

Source: El Diario

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