Skip to main content

Turkey rejects Nato offer of trilateral talks with Sweden and Finland

Ankara wants Nordic applicants to security alliance to address concerns on terrorism.
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey’s president, said: ‘Until Sweden and Finland show clear, concrete and decisive steps we will definitely not change our stance on the Nato issu


 Turkey has rejected invitations by Nato to participate in trilateral talks with Finland and Sweden aimed at finding a solution to Ankara’s opposition to the Nordic countries’ applications to join the western military alliance.

Ankara has demanded concrete proposals from Helsinki and Stockholm to address its concerns over terrorism before agreeing to mediated talks, according to three people with knowledge of the discussions, forcing Nato officials to attempt to broker a deal through bilateral talks with each country.

Prompted by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Sweden and Finland applied to join Nato last month, with alliance leaders stating that they expected their bids to pass the first stage of approval within a couple of weeks.
 But Turkey’s objections have frozen that process, with president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan calling the two countries “incubators” for terrorists and accusing Sweden of failing to crack down on members of the Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK), an armed militia that has fought the Turkish state since the 1980s, and its affiliates.

A meeting tentatively scheduled for Wednesday between officials from the three countries and moderated by a senior Nato official did not take place, one of the three people added.

A trilateral meeting mediated by Nato officials was the “ultimate objective . . . but we’re not there yet”, a senior official from the alliance told the Financial Times, citing Turkey’s unwillingness to participate and a lack of clarity regarding Ankara’s demands of the two applicants.

Erdoğan on Wednesday reiterated his demand for concessions from the two Nordic nations. “Until Sweden and Finland show clear, concrete and decisive steps we will definitely not change our stance on the Nato issue,” he said.

Asked about a failure to hold trilateral talks, Nato secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg said this week that “we have a process now where there have been meetings in different formats”.

He pointed to his chief of staff meeting Turkey’s national security adviser and a call between himself and Erdoğan but no examples of Nato-Finland-Sweden-Turkey talks.
 Stoltenberg said on Wednesday that he “and people in his staff” were working to solve Turkey’s “legitimate concerns”, and admitted that he was less optimistic about the Nordic countries’ application process than a month ago.

“We need to sit down and address those concerns,” he said at a press conference. “This will take more time than we originally expected.”

Finland and Sweden have said they are tightening their anti-terror legislation and could ease their arm sales conditions to Turkey once they become Nato members in an attempt to overcome Ankara’s objections. Like Turkey, Finland and Sweden designate the PKK as a terrorist organisation.

Spokespeople for Turkey’s foreign ministry and Nato did not immediately respond to requests for comment about Ankara’s rejections of trilateral talks.

“We are not panicking or desperately worrying yet,” said the senior official, adding that a negotiated agreement that would see Turkey drop its objections to the two countries joining the alliance was “still in the realm of diplomatic options”.



Comments

Popular posts from this blog

A Harvard nutritionist shares the No. 1 vitamin that keeps her brain ‘young and healthy’—and foods she eats ‘every day’

As a nutritional psychiatrist, I always make it a point to maintain a well-balanced diet. Much of that has to do with making sure I get all the right vitamins, especially because it’s essential to preventing cognitive decline. And given that the risk of neurological diseases increases as we get older, one question I often get from my patients is: “What is the best vitamin for protecting our aging brains?” Each of our microbiomes is like a thumbprint, so a truly effective eating plan is personalized to the unique needs of an individual. But the vitamin group I prioritize the most to keep my brain young and healthy are B vitamins. The brain benefits of B vitamins Depression, dementia and mental impairment are often associated with a deficiency of B vitamins, a study from the Wayne State University School of Medicine found. “A B12 vitamin deficiency as a cause of cognitive issues is more common than we think, especially among the elderly who live alone and don’t eat properly,”...

AUPCTRE to Buhari: Save NDDC from destruction, inaugurate board

The groundswell of agitation for the inauguration of the substantive board of NDDC in compliance with the law, has continued to rise with the demand from a Labour group, the Amalgamated Union of Public Corporations, Civil Service Technical and Recreational Services Employees (AUPCTRE) to President Muhammadu Buhari to inaugurate the board of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) The appeal was contained in a statement issued by the General Secretary of AUPCTRE, Comrade Sikiru Wahid, on Sunday, August 14, 2022. The labour union said the call has become imperative to save the commission from destruction. There has been unending calls by authentic stakeholders who have consistently demanded that the NDDC Act should be complied with in the governance of the Commission noting that it is illegal to have contraptions of interim management committees / sole administrator to administer the NDDC and arbitrarily utilise the monthly sums due to the Commission.  AUPCTRE in th...

China issues alert as drought and heatwave put crops at risk

                                  Good day 😊 Local authorities told to take measures and ‘use every unit of water carefully’ in effort to save autumn harvest  A drought in China is threatening food production, prompting the government to order local authorities to take all available measures to ensure crops survive the hottest summer on record. On Tuesday, four government departments issued an urgent joint emergency notice, warning that the autumn harvest was under “severe threat”. It urged local authorities to ensure “every unit of water … be used carefully”, and called for methods included staggered irrigation, the diversion of new water sources, and cloud seeding.  A record-breaking heatwave combined with a months-long drought during the usual flood season has wreaked havoc across China’s usually water-rich south. It has dried up parts of the Yangtze River and dozens of tributa...