Turkey expects Finland to lift an arms embargo, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Tuesday (December 6), as part of steps Ankara expects before approving Helsinki and Stockholm's NATO membership bids, Reuters reports.
Speaking at a news conference, Cavusoglu also said a Kurdish man who was extradited from Sweden to Turkey at the weekend was not on the list of people Ankara wanted from Stockholm.
Sweden on Friday deported Turkish citizen Mahmut Tat, who had sought asylum in Sweden in 2015 after being sentenced in Turkey to six years and 10 months in jail for alleged links to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).
"The decision to extradite the said person to Turkey is pleasing but this person was not on our list. At this point, it doesn't matter whether he is on the list or not. Our demands, such as the extradition of the listed people to Turkey and the freezing of the assets of those who are there, are serious demands," Cavusoglu said.
Sweden and Finland applied in May to join NATO in response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine but ran into objections from Turkey, which accused the two countries of harbouring militants from the PKK and other groups.
Stockholm and Helsinki deny sheltering militants but have pledged to cooperate with Ankara to fully address its security concerns and also to lift arms embargoes.
NATO makes its decisions by consensus, meaning that the two Nordic nations require the approval of all 30 alliance member states. Only Turkey still stands opposed to their membership.
