MOSCOW, May 27. /TASS/. NATO will not be able to ignore Turkey’s concerns about Sweden’s and Finland’s accession to the bloc, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko said on Friday.
"In this sense, what we are witnessing concerning Finland’s and Sweden’s upcoming accession to the North Atlantic Alliance, obviously, neither Brussels nor Stockholm nor Helsinki will not be able to simply wave away Turkey’s concerns," he said in an interview with the Rossiya-24 television channel.
"Ankara is unlikely to be convinced merely by the arguments of ‘NATO solidarity’ and that there should be no objecting against the alliance’s expansion," he said. "I think that some compromise solutions will be found to meet Ankara’s interests and position."
Finnish and Swedish ambassadors to NATO, Klaus Korhonen and Axel Vernhoff, on May 18 handed their countries’ applications for NATO membership to the alliance’s Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg.
Speaking at the summit of the Collective Security Treaty Organization in Moscow on May 16 Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Moscow would retaliate against the expansion of NATO’s military infrastructures in Finland and Sweden. At the same time, the Russian leader remarked that NATO’s admission of Finland and Sweden did not pose an immediate threat to Russia, because Moscow had no problems in relations with these countries.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on May 18 that Ankara would refuse to support the admission of Sweden and Finland to NATO until they made a decision on their attitude to terrorist organizations, including the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, which Turkey regards as terrorist. He made a similar statement on May 16, adding that he was against admitting Finland and Sweden to NATO due to these countries’ refusal to extradite accomplices in KWP’s activity to Turkey. Nevertheless, on May 21, the Turkish leader said that his country would support Sweden’s and Finland’s accession to the bloc is Stockholm and Helsinki clearly demonstrate solidarity with Ankara’s security concerns.
https://tass.com/politics/1457133