Sweden says Turkey is asking too much about NATO’s request

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) – Sweden’s prime minister said on Sunday that Sweden was confident Turkey would accept its application to join the NATO military alliance, but that it would not meet all the conditions Ankara set for its support.

“Turkey both maintain that we did what we said we would do, but they also say they want things that we cannot or do not want to give them,” Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson told a conference of a defense think tank in Sweden.

Finland and Sweden signed a trilateral agreement with Turkey in 2022 aimed at overcoming Ankara’s objections to their NATO membership.

In May, they applied to join NATO in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but Turkey objected and accused the countries of harboring militants, including from the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

At a news conference later on Sunday, Kristersson said the demands that Sweden could not or did not want to meet were outside the scope of the trilateral memorandum.

“From time to time Turkey mentions individuals they want to extradite from Sweden. That is why I said that these cases are dealt with within the framework of Swedish law,” he said.

Ankara expressed its disappointment with a decision issued by the Supreme Court in Sweden late last year to stop a request for the extradition of a journalist with alleged links to the Islamic scholar Fethullah Gulen, whom Turkey accused of attempting a coup.

(Reporting by Johan Ahlander and Simon Johnson) Editing by Barbara Lewis

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