Sweden hopes to hold constructive meetings with Turkish officials soon to dispel their concerns about the Nordic nation's NATO accession plans, Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson said on Wednesday
UNITED NATIONS (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 01st June, 2022) Sweden hopes to hold constructive meetings with Turkish officials soon to dispel their concerns about the Nordic nation's NATO accession plans, Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson said on Wednesday.
"I'm looking forward to constructive meetings with Turkey in the near future. Our responses to demands and also questions from Turkey we will take directly ... and also sort out any issues and misunderstandings that there might be," Andersson said at a joint press conference with UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres in Stockholm.
On May 18, Sweden and Finland submitted their NATO membership applications, abandoning decades of neutrality and citing a shift in the security situation in Europe brought on by the Ukraine crisis. Turkey blocked the applications' review process over the two nations' long-standing support of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, which Turkey deems terrorist. On May 25, Finnish and Swedish delegations traveled to Ankara for talks, yet a resolution was not reached, with Turkey still obstructing the two countries from joining NATO.
On Tuesday, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said that his country was awaiting responses from Finland and Sweden to the written conditions set out by Ankara for them to endorse their accession to NATO. Turkey stands by its position regardless of the Nordic states' efforts and needs clear written guarantees to be able to support their entry to NATO, the minister added.
