The United States supports Turkey’s desire to join the European Union but does not believe that it should make it a condition for giving the green light to Sweden’s entry into NATOa State Department spokesman said Monday.
“The United States has supported Turkey’s aspirations to join the EU for years and we continue to do so,” said Matt Miller. “However, we do not believe that it should be an impediment to Sweden’s accession to NATO,” he added.
This Monday, on the eve of the NATO summit in Vilnius, the Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan He set a new condition to lift his veto on Sweden’s accession to the Atlantic Alliance: that the EU reopen negotiations for Turkey’s accession to the bloc, which began in 2005 but have been stalled for years.
“Ultimately, that is a matter between the European Union and Turkey,” Miller said, but insisted that NATO’s expansion to include Sweden was important to Washington.
According to Miller, the US Secretary of State, Anthony Blinkenhas spoken with Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan three times in the past six days, and President Joe Biden did the same with Erdogan on Sunday.
Sweden has complied with Ankara’s demands for approval, Miller said.
Initially the discrepancies between Turkey and Sweden were due to Sweden’s position regarding Kurdish opposition movements, such as the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which Ankara includes on its blacklist of groups it considers “terrorists”.
Erdogan made those remarks in Ankara on Monday before leaving for the military alliance summit in Vilnius, Lithuania.
“Turkey has been waiting at the door of the European Union for 50 years and almost all NATO member countries are now members of the European Union. I make this request to those countries that have kept Turkey waiting at the gates of the European Union for more than 50 years,” Erdogan said.
“Come and pave the way for Turkey’s membership in the European Union. When they pave the way for Turkey, we will pave the way for Sweden as we did for Finland,” he added.
Turkey is a candidate to enter the EU, but its process has been paralyzed due to the democratic setback in Ankara and disputes with Cyprus, a member of the bloc.
Swedish Foreign Minister Tobias Billström told public broadcaster SVT that he expected Turkey to end by indicating it would allow Sweden to join the alliance, although he said he could not say whether that would happen at the annual summit.
“What we are counting on, of course, is reaching a point where we get a message from President Erdogan that there will be what could be called a green light (…) a message that the ratification process in the Turkish parliament can begin”, said the minister.
Turkey has blocked Sweden’s accession to NATO and said the country must do more to go after Kurdish militants and other groups Ankara views as a threat to its national security. The anti-Turkey and anti-Islam protests in Stockholm raised doubts that a deal could be reached before the alliance summit.
Billström said Sweden has fulfilled its part of a three-way agreement that Sweden, Finland and Turkey signed at the NATO summit in Madrid last year.
“We would consider it a settled issue in the sense that it is not a question of if it will happen. In connection with the NATO summit in Madrid last year, Turkey already gave Sweden NATO guest status. So it’s a question of when,” she noted.
Billström said he hoped Hungary, which has also not ratified Sweden’s membership, would do so before Turkey.
Sweden and Finland, which had previously refrained from doing so, applied to join NATO last year after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Finland entered the group in April this year.
(With information from AFP and AP)
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Source-www.infobae.com