Erdogan puts Finland ahead of Sweden in the race for NATO membership

29 Jan. () –

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned this Sunday that they could respond “differently” to Finland’s NATO membership request, a response that will “shock” Sweden.

“We would respond differently to Finland if necessary. Sweden will be shocked when we respond differently to Finland. Finland should not make the same mistake,” Erdogan said during an event with young people in the Turkish province of Bilecik, according to the Anatolia news agency.

Erdogan recalled that he has delivered a list of 120 names to Sweden for their extradition. “You have to extradite these terrorists to be able to join NATO,” he stressed.

Sweden and Finland presented their applications for NATO membership in a coordinated manner last May, but Turkey, as a member of the Alliance, has the right to veto, which is why it has taken the opportunity to demand that Stockholm persecute members of the party-militia Kurdish Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

In June Turkey and the two Scandinavian countries signed a memorandum in Madrid in which they undertook to satisfy Ankara’s legitimate security concerns.

BURNING THE QUR’AN

The tension has aggravated after the burning of a copy of the Koran in front of a mosque in Denmark on Friday at the hands of the far-right Swedish-Danish Rasmus Paludan, leader of the Stram Kurs (Hard Line) party. The previous Friday he burned another copy in Stockholm.

“Have they erased the Koran by burning a copy of the Koran in Sweden? They have only shown how ignoble they are. Denmark has done the same,” Erdogan said.

Paludan has announced that it will burn a copy of the Koran every Friday until Sweden joins NATO. At the moment he alone has achieved the condemnation of the majority of Muslim countries.