Erdogan says Turkey will not approve Sweden’s bid to join NATO

Turkey will not approve the application for Sweden’s entry into NATO, the issue of Finland’s admission to the alliance can be resolved positively, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said.

“Sweden should not waste time. As long as you allow our holy scripture, the Koran, to be burned, to be torn up, and against this background your law enforcement officers will be inactive, we will not say yes to your entry into NATO. At the same time, we have a positive attitude towards Finland in this matter,” he said (quote according to TASS).

A new round of tension in relations between Sweden and Turkey was caused by several radical actions. On January 21, far-right Danish politician Rasmus Paludan, who heads the anti-Islamic Stram Kurs (“Hard Course”) party, burned a Koran outside the Turkish embassy in Stockholm. The action was agreed with the mayor’s office, and Paludan paid the fee due for such a performance. He held a similar action on January 27 already in Copenhagen.

After the first action, Erdogan said that Stockholm could not wait for Ankara’s support in joining NATO, calling the burning of the Koran an ugly act that offends “everyone who respects the fundamental rights and freedoms of people, especially Muslims.” On January 24, Finnish Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto did not rule out that his country could continue the process of joining NATO without Sweden, but then said that the Finnish position on joining together with a neighbor had not changed. His Swedish colleague Tobias Billström admitted that “negotiations stalled” because of Paludan’s shares.

Sweden and Finland applied for NATO membership simultaneously on May 18, 2022. So far, only two countries of the NATO bloc – Hungary and Turkey – have not ratified the protocols on the accession of the two Nordic countries to the alliance.