ISTANBUL (AP) — Sweden and Finland are unlikely to give you the option to join NATO before June, a senior Turkish official said Saturday.
“It really is dependent upon how briskly they move and the way wide and deep they move on these issues,” said Ibrahim Kalin, spokesman and foreign policy adviser for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
“What they’re telling us is the brand new laws can be fully effective and accomplished by June, but perhaps there are some things they’ll do before,” Kalin said.
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“In principle we would love to see them (Sweden and Finland) in NATO,” Kalin told foreign journalists in Istanbul. “What they are saying is that they need a bit bit more time. We told them ‘You might have to fulfill these conditions,’ meaning that they must send a serious message to the PKK.”
Ankara recognizes the Swedish and Finnish commitment to changing anti-terror laws in accordance with an agreement signed between the three countries ultimately June’s NATO summit, he added.
“Stockholm is fully committed to implementing the agreement that was signed last yr in Madrid, however the country needs six more months to jot down recent laws that may allow the judicial system to implement the brand new definitions of terrorism.”
The timetable for presidential and parliamentary elections in Turkey could also play a task, Kalin said. The polls are currently scheduled for June 18, however the timing of the Mecca pilgrimage and a non secular holiday could see them brought forward a month. Any NATO deal have to be ratified by parliament, which is prone to go into recess before the elections.
“We consider on this process and we intend to make progress, but when these incidents proceed, it isn’t going to look good on them and it is going to actually affect the method — it is going to decelerate progress,” he said.
Kalin also spoke concerning the war in Ukraine, and Turkey’s rapprochement with Syria.
He defended Ankara’s decision not to affix Western sanctions on Russia, pointing to the grain deal and prisoner exchanges as successes for its role as an intermediary.
Such “localized moments of de-escalation” would help bring an end to the war. “If the goal (of sanctions) was to vary Russian behavior and end the war, I don’t think that’s been achieved,” he said.
Referring to talks to normalize relations between Ankara and Damascus, Kalin said the initial meeting between the neighbors’ defense ministers at the tip of December may very well be prolonged, with foreign ministers possibly meeting in February.
“We are going to see how these meetings go, what form of outcomes they produce after which, depending on that, we’ll speak about a possible meeting at the extent of the president,” he said.
Erdogan has been a bitter critic of Syrian President Bashar Assad because the outbreak of the civil war 11 years ago and has thrown his support behind rebel groups fighting for Assad’s overthrow. The Turkish president, nonetheless, is under intense pressure at home to return Syrian refugees amid an economic crisis.
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