Turkey stalls Sweden’s Nato bid ahead of Stoltenberg visit

Turkey isn’t satisfied with promises made by Sweden to crack down on Kurdish separatists and is unlikely to lift its objections to the nation’s Nato membership bid unless it takes more definitive steps, Turkey’s ruling AK Party spokesman Omer Celik said.

“These statements of Sweden are good, but not enough until they are implemented,” Celik said late Monday. “We are waiting for it to come to life.”

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has demanded that Sweden and Finland —both of which sought Nato membership after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — extradite suspects Turkey considers terrorists.

Celik’s remarks, ahead of a visit by Nato Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg this week and a separate trip by new Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson next week, signaled that Turkey remains defiant in ratifying the membership bids that it first threatened to veto in May.

“We have full respect for the fact that every country within the alliance makes its own decisions,” Kristersson said at a news conference in Helsinki on Tuesday. “I had a telephone call with President Erdogan the other day. We agreed on me coming to Ankara and I will communicate the exact date when it is formally confirmed.”

Stoltenberg has encouraged both Sweden and Finland to accede to the requests from Turkey, which has the second-largest armed forces within the North Atlantic Treaty Organization after the US.

—Bloomberg