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COPENHAGEN, Denmark , 20 May (AP) \u2014 NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Thursday he was \u201dconfident that we will come to a quick decision to welcome both Sweden and Finland to join the NATO family\u201d despite Turkey\u2019s opposition to the two Nordic countries joining the 30-member military alliance.<\/p>\n
Stoltenberg would not be drawn out further on the substance of Turkey\u2019s objections, but he said that NATO remains in close contact with Sweden, Finland and Turkey.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are addressing the concerns that Turkey has expressed. Because when an important ally (like) Turkey raises security concerns, raises issues, then of course the only way to deal with that is to sit down and find common ground,\u201d he told reporters.<\/p>\n
Finland and Sweden officially applied to join the world\u2019s biggest security organization on Wednesday. A first meeting of NATO ambassadors to discuss their applications failed to reach a consensus on whether to move forward.<\/p>\n
The NATO chief was in Copenhagen and met with Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen and Danish Defense Minister Morten B\u00f8dskov.<\/p>\n
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP\u2019s earlier story follows below.<\/p>\n
ISTANBUL (AP) \u2014 Turkey will oppose Sweden and Finland joining NATO, the country\u2019s president flatly stated in a video released Thursday.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have told our relevant friends we would say \u2018no\u2019 to Finland and Sweden\u2019s entry into NATO, and we will continue on our path like this,\u201d President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told a group of Turkish youth in the video for Commemoration of Atat\u00fcrk, Youth and Sports Day, a national holiday.<\/p>\n
Turkey\u2019s approval of Finland and Sweden\u2019s application to join the Western military alliance is crucial because NATO makes decisions by consensus. Each of its 30 member countries has the power to veto a membership bid.<\/p>\n
Erdogan has said Turkey\u2019s objection stems from grievances with Sweden\u2019s – and to a lesser degree with Finland\u2019s – perceived support of the banned Kurdistan Workers\u2019 Party, or PKK, and an armed group in Syria that Turkey sees as an extension of the PKK. The conflict with the PKK has killed tens of thousands of people since 1984.<\/p>\n
Turkey also accuses Sweden and Finland of harboring the followers of Fethullah Gulen, a U.S.-based Muslim cleric whom the Turkish government blames for 2016 military coup attempt.<\/p>\n
A full recording of Erdogan\u2019s conversation with the youth for the holiday that marks the beginning of the Turkish War of Independence in 1919 is expected to be released Thursday night. It was not immediately clear when the conversation took place.<\/p>\n
In the remarks made available earlier Thursday, Erdogan accused the two prospective NATO members and especially Sweden of being \u201ca focus of terror, home to terror.\u201d He accused them of giving financial and weapons support to the armed groups, and claimed the countries\u2019 alleged links to terror organizations meant they should not be part of the trans-Atlantic alliance.<\/p>\n
Turkish officials, including the president, also have pointed to arms restrictions on Turkey as a reason for Ankara\u2019s opposition to the two countries becoming part of NATO.<\/p>\n
Several European countries, including Sweden and Finland, restricted arms exports to Turkey following the country\u2019s cross-border operation into northeast Syria in 2019 with the stated goal of clearing the border area of Kurdish militants.<\/p>\n
Turkey says the Syrian Kurdish People\u2019s Defense Units, or YPG, is directly linked to the PKK, and Ankara was frustrated by American support for them in fighting the Islamic State group.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
COPENHAGEN, Denmark , 20 May (AP) \u2014 NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Thursday he was \u201dconfident that we will come to a quick decision to welcome both Sweden and Finland to join the NATO family\u201d despite Turkey\u2019s opposition to the two Nordic countries joining the 30-member military alliance. Stoltenberg would not be drawn out further […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-191206","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191206","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=191206"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191206\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}