Experts will discuss the membership of Sweden and Finland in NATO in the coming days

Çavuşoğlu said that experts will discuss the membership of Sweden and Finland in NATO in the coming days

An expert group of Turkey, Sweden and Finland will discuss the countries’ NATO membership in the coming days in Brussels, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Friday.

“There will be a trilateral meeting of experts in Brussels in the coming days at the suggestion of the NATO secretary general,” Çavuşoğlu said in a briefing broadcast on social media.

According to him, Swedish and Finnish experts will see which points Turkey has and has not met during the meeting.
He reiterated that terrorist groups, namely the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party, were undermining Sweden’s efforts to join the alliance.

Earlier in Stockholm there was a rally of PKK supporters at which they made a number of insulting remarks and gestures against the incumbent Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan. RIA Novosti news agency reported that the Swedish ambassador in Ankara was summoned to the Turkish Foreign Ministry and was protested in connection with the rally. For his part, Turkish Parliament Speaker Mustafa Shentop cancelled a previously planned visit to Ankara by his Swedish counterpart. The Turkish president’s lawyer filed a complaint with Ankara’s main prosecutor’s office in connection with the action.

Finland and Sweden, against the backdrop of the events in Ukraine, submitted applications to the NATO secretary general for membership in the alliance on May 18, 2022. To date, only two countries out of 30 – Hungary and Turkey – have not ratified the applications of Sweden and Finland to NATO.