ANKARA/HELSINKI: Finland and Sweden should change their laws if needed to meet Turkey’s demands and win its backing for their bid to join NATO, the Turkish foreign minister said on Tuesday, doubling down on a threat to veto a historic enlargement of the alliance.
In a move that shocked its allies, Turkey on May 13 objected to Finland and Sweden joining NATO on the grounds that they harbor people linked to groups it deems terrorists, including the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), and because they halted arm exports to Turkey in 2019. The Nordic states applied to join NATO after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
All 30 NATO members must approve any enlargement plans.
Mevlut Cavusoglu said Turkey, a NATO member for seven decades, would not lift its veto unless its demands were met, echoing recent comments by President Tayyip Erdogan.
Ankara has said Sweden and Finland must halt their support for the PKK and other groups, bar them from organizing any events on their territory, extradite those sought by Turkey on terrorism charges, support Ankara’s military and counter-terrorism operations, and lift all arms exports restrictions.
Finland and Sweden have sought to negotiate a solution and other NATO capitals have said they remain confident that the objections raised by Turkey — which has NATO’s second biggest military — can be overcome.
Cavusoglu said Turkey had given visiting Finnish and Swedish delegations documents outlining the demands during talks in Ankara last week and that it was awaiting their response, adding he expected allies to work to address the security concerns.
“Are our demands impossible? No. We want them to halt their support for terror,” Cavusoglu told the state-run Anadolu news agency, adding Ankara was aware that some of its demands would require laws to be amended.
“They put it this way: ‘since we are far away from terror regions, our laws are designed that way’. Well, then you need to change them,” he said. “They say it is allowed for the terrorist organization to organize events and wave their rags around. Then you have to change your law.”
The Nordic states have said they condemn terrorism and are open to dialogue.
Cavusoglu said NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg was working on the issue and had proposed holding talks in Brussels with all three countries, but said Ankara saw no point before Stockholm and Helsinki had responded to its written demands.
“There need to be concrete things for us to discuss,” he said.
Earlier, Erdogan’s Communications Director Fahrettin Altun told Finland’s largest daily Helsingin Sanomat that Finland must take Turkey’s concerns seriously.
“Eventually Finland’s government must decide which is more important — to join NATO or protect these kinds of organizations,” he said, referring to the PKK and the other groups Ankara deems terrorists.
Turkey says Nordics must change laws if needed to meet its NATO demands
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Turkey says Nordics must change laws if needed to meet its NATO demands
- Mevlut Cavusoglu said Turkey, a NATO member for seven decades, would not lift its veto unless its demands were met
Syria’s Sharaa grants Kurdish Syrians citizenship, language rights for first time, SANA says
- The decree for the first time grants Kurdish Syrians rights, including recognition of Kurdish identity as part of Syria’s national fabric
- It designates Kurdish as a national language alongside Arabic and allows schools to teach it
DAMASCUS: Syria’s President Ahmed Al-Sharaa issued a decree affirming the rights of the Kurdish Syrians, formally recognizing their language and restoring citizenship to all Kurdish Syrians, state news agency SANA reported on Friday.
Sharaa’s decree came after fierce clashes that broke out last week in the northern city of Aleppo, leaving at least 23 people dead, according to Syria’s health ministry, and forced more than 150,000 to flee the two Kurdish-run pockets of the city.
The clashes ended after Kurdish fighters withdrew.
The violence in Aleppo has deepened one of the main faultlines in Syria, where Al-Sharaa’s promise to unify the country under one leadership after 14 years of war has faced resistance from Kurdish forces wary of his Islamist-led government.
The decree for the first time grants Kurdish Syrians rights, including recognition of Kurdish identity as part of Syria’s national fabric. It designates Kurdish as a national language alongside Arabic and allows schools to teach it.
It also abolishes measures dating to a 1962 census in Hasaka province that stripped many Kurds of Syrian nationality, granting citizenship to all affected residents, including those previously registered as stateless.
The decree declares Nowruz, the spring and new year festival, a paid national holiday. It bans ethnic or linguistic discrimination, requires state institutions to adopt inclusive national messaging and sets penalties for incitement to ethnic strife.
The Syrian government and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), that controls the country’s northeast, have engaged in months of talks last year to integrate Kurdish-run military and civilian bodies into Syrian state institutions by the end of 2025, but there has been little progress.
