US steps up pressure on Turkey to ratify Nato’s Nordic expansion

Bloomberg

The US signaled growing impatience with Turkey over its resistance to ratifying Nato’s expansion to Sweden and Finland.
“The United States urges remaining allies to quickly ratify their accession,” State Department spokesperson Ned Price said in an account of a call between Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Finnish Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto. He used similar language in summarizing a conversation between Blinken and Swedish Foreign Minister Tobias Billstrom.
The calls followed Blinken’s Wednesday meeting in Washington with Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu.
“We are close allies and partners; that doesn’t mean we don’t have differences, but when we have differences, precisely because we are allies and partners, we work through them in that spirit,” Blinken said before that meeting with his Turkish counterpart.
Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has continued to call on Sweden to crack down on Kurdish groups outlawed in Turkey. Sweden insists it’s in compliance with an agreement hammered out at Nato’s June summit in Madrid last year, which allowed the expansion process to move forward. Still, Turkey wants Sweden to take further steps, including the extradition of suspects it labels terrorists.
The two Nordic countries have advanced armed forces that already work cooperatively with Nato members, and US officials have said they would quickly integrate into and strengthen the alliance. Finland and Sweden sought to become members after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Erdogan warns Greece
to beware ‘crazy Turks’
to fire up crowd
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan turned to nationalist rhetoric against Greece to fire up supporters ahead of this year’s elections, warning Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis not to antagonize him over long-running territorial disputes.
“Look Mitsotakis, you are speaking here and there, but you should know that if you make a mistake, then crazy Turks would march,” Erdogan said at a rally in Istanbul on Friday, to the cheers of hundreds of supporters.
He went on to deny any plan to strike Athens with newly-developed Typhoon missiles, as long as Greece doesn’t “act smart.”
Turkey and rival Greece are both holding elections in coming months and their leaders are known for using their speeches to address conflicts in the Aegean Sea that separates the countries or the eastern Mediterranean. Erdogan on Friday reiterated that Greece was arming its Aegean islands, violating international agreements.
Mitsotakis said Thursday he believes a resolution to the countries’ differences could be made possible by speaking with Erdogan, and stressed the two neighbors will not go to war.
However, he repeated his criticism of Turkey’s energy and territorial ambitions in the region, among other issues.
“We cannot accept, for example, the fact that Turkey signs a memorandum of understanding with Libya that denies Crete any right to maritime zones,” he said at the World Economic Forum in Davos. “These are completely unacceptable premises.”