Next tripartite meeting with Sweden, Finland postponed due to 'current political environment': Türkiye

By Faruk Zorlu

ANKARA (AA) - The Turkish foreign minister said Thursday that the next tripartite meeting slated for February with Sweden and Finland on their NATO bids was postponed due to the "current political environment."

In this environment, a meeting, to be held under the June 2022 tripartite memorandum signed by Türkiye, Finland, and Sweden, is "meaningless," Mevlut Cavusoglu said in a joint news conference with his Serbian counterpart Ivica Dacic, referring to the increased number of occasions where Sweden failed to fulfill its commitments under the deal.

"The purpose of this mechanism is to see which conditions in the memorandum are fulfilled or not. But this was postponed as it would not be a sound meeting because the environment in this situation would overshadow it," he said.

The first meeting of the Permanent Joint Mechanism established under the memorandum was held on Aug. 26, 2022 in Vantaa, Finland, while the second meeting on Nov. 26, 2022 in Stockholm.

So, there is "no use in that either," he said, adding that Sweden has not taken any serious steps to implement the memorandum.

Sweden must choose either to de-mine its route to joining NATO or step on those mines and blow up its chances, Cavusoglu stressed.

About the recent desecration of the Muslim holy book, the Quran, he said: "The vile attack in Sweden is a racist attack that has nothing to do with freedom of thought," adding: "The Swedish government has taken part in this crime by allowing this vile act."

On Jan. 21, Rasmus Paludan, an extreme-right Swedish-Danish politician, burned a copy of the Muslim holy book, the Quran, outside the Turkish Embassy in Stockholm, under police protection and with permission from the authorities, drawing a wave of condemnations from across the Arab and Islamic worlds.

On the following day, Edwin Wagensveld, a far-right Dutch politician and the leader of the Islamophobic group Pegida, tore out pages from a copy of the Quran in The Hague. Wagensveld's video on Twitter showed that he burned the torn-out pages of the holy book in a pan.

Sweden and Finland formally applied to join NATO last May, abandoning decades of military non-alignment, a decision spurred by Russia's war on Ukraine, which started on Feb. 24, 2022.

But Türkiye – a NATO member for more than 70 years – voiced objections, accusing the two countries of tolerating and even supporting terrorist groups including the PKK and the Fetullah Terrorist Organization (FETO), the group behind the July 15, 2016 coup attempt in Türkiye.

Last June, Türkiye and the two Nordic countries signed a memorandum at a NATO summit to address Ankara's legitimate security concerns, paving the way for their eventual membership in the alliance.

In the memorandum, Sweden and Finland agreed not to provide support to the YPG/PYD and FETO, to prevent all activities of the terror groups, the extradition of terror suspects, to introduce new legislation to punish terrorist crimes, and not to implement national arms embargoes among the three countries.