Turkey’s foreign minister says Finland must publicly disclose that it's lifting an arms embargo on Turkey to win Ankara’s contest for its membership into NATO.
ANKARA, Turkey: The foreign minister of Türkiye said on Tuesday, that Finland must publicly declare that it's lifting an arms embargo on Turkey to win Ankara’s approval for its membership to western military group NATO, International media reports.
Mevlut Cavusoglu made the comments ahead of visit by Finland’s Defense Minister Antti Kaikkonen, who will be discussing his nation’s bid to join the military alliance with his Turkiye counterpart Hulusi Akar on Thursday.
“The Finnish defense minister’s visit to Turkey is important because we have not yet heard a statement from Finland saying they’ve lifted their arms embargo against us,” Cavusoglu told reporters. “We’re expecting such a statement from there.”
Europe's Sweden and Finland abandoned their longstanding policies of military nonalignment and applied for membership in the alliance after Russian forces invaded Ukraine in February, amid concerns that Russia might see them future.
Turkiye has been holding up Sweden and Finland’s willings to join the military alliance, accusing the two Nordic countries of ignoring threats to Turkiyr from Kurdish militants and other groups it considers as terrorists and pressing them to crackdown on these groups. Ankara has also been pressuring the two countries to lift a de-facto ban on weapons sales to Turkiye.
Sweden announced in September that it was removing an arms embargo it had imposed on Ankara in 2019 following Turkey’s military operation against the Kurdish militia in Syria.
Turkiye, which has accused the two countries of ignoring threats against it from Kurdish militants and other groups that it considers as terrorists, has not endorsed their accession. The parliaments of Turkey and Hungary have yet to ratify their applications. The 28 other NATO member states have already done so.
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