Turkey to meet Sweden, Finland over NATO bid later this month

Turkey to meet Sweden, Finland  over NATO bid later this month
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Turkish FM Mevlut Cavusoglu announced that Sweden, Finland and Turkey will meet on August 26 in a follow up meeting over the trilateral memorandum they signed during the NATO summit in June.

The Turkish foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu announced that Sweden, Finland and Turkey will meet on August 26 in a follow up meeting over the trilateral memorandum they signed during the NATO summit in June.

Officials from Turkey, Finland, and Sweden will convene later this month 

to evaluate the proceedings of a trilateral memorandum over the NATO application of the Nordic countries, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said, criticizing the two countries for not taking ‘concrete steps’ in fulfilling Turkey’s conditions for their membership.

Turkey consented to dropping its objection to two NATO hopefuls’ accession as they assured that they 'will not provide support' to the People's Protection Units (YPG) in north Syria and to the organization described as 'FETO' in Turkey, and confirmed that the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) is a 'proscribed terrorist organization.'

As for the 'extradition' of individuals, the memorandum stated that 'Finland and Sweden will address Turkey's pending deportation or extradition requests of terror suspects expeditiously and thoroughly.'

Two days after the memorandum was signed, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said that Sweden had 'promised' Turkey to extradite '73 terrorists', a pledge not confirmed by Swedish authorities. 

Cavusoglu said that the three countries are set to meet on August 26 and in the meeting Turkey wanted to see what steps Sweden and Finland have taken in fulfilling Ankara’s demands, noting that “there is no time pressure on us [Turkey]. …in the end, they are the countries that want to be NATO members.”

Meanwhile, Sweden on Thursday agreed to extradite a 35-year-old man to Turkey, who was sentenced to 14 years in prison after being convicted of committing bank card fraud, a first since the deal was struck.

Although the man was not wanted with terrorist charges, he said he was wrongfully sentenced because he converted from Islam to Christianity, refused to do military service, and has Kurdish roots, Swedish SVT reported. 

Sweden’s Ministry of Justice declined to say if the man was on the list of people Turkey has demanded to have extradited.