Finland has to stop "protecting" a “terrorist organisation” and take Turkey's security concerns seriously if it is to be accepted into NATO, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said.
The Nordic country, along with its neighbour Sweden, formally applied to join NATO last month amid Russia's invasion of Ukraine, but had the move blocked by Turkey, in a move that shocked members of the alliance.
Turkey has objected to Finland's and Sweden's joining the Western defence alliance on the grounds that the two countries harbour people linked to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militant group and others it deems terrorists.
Finland’s halting of arms exports to Turkey in 2019 had also soured relations.
Communications Director of the Turkish President, Fahrettin Altun, told Finland’s largest daily newspaper, Helsingin Sanomat, on Tuesday that the problem was Finland’s “refusal to take Turkey’s security concerns seriously”.
Altun's words echoed what Erdogan's chief foreign policy adviser Ibrahim Kalin told his U.S. counterpart on Monday, calling for the two Nordic countries to "take concrete steps regarding the terrorist organisations that threaten Turkey's national security".
"Eventually Finland's government must decide which is more important, to join NATO or protect these kinds of organisations," Altun told the paper.
President Erdogan was said to be in talks with Finland late last month over his issues with the country’s NATO membership.
Finland and Sweden formally applied to join NATO on May 18 but had the unexpectedly tough response from Turkey.
Shortly after the president’s initial response, the Turkish Presidency said a key Erdogan adviser had spoken with counterparts from Sweden, Finland, Germany, the United Kingdom and United States.
NATO membership progress was only possible if Turkey's expectations were met, it said.
One person close to the situation said under condition of anonymity that: "all this is muddying the waters, but not holding up the overall accession plan."
Turkey is one of the rare countries in the Black Sea region that has good relations with both Ukraine and Russia.
From the outset of Russia’s war on Ukraine, President Erdogan has emphasised that Turkey does not want to choose between Russia and Ukraine.
He supports Ukraine due to the Crimean Tatar connection and Ankara’s bilateral partnership with Kyiv – not to mention Turkey’s traditional instinct to balance Russian power in the Black Sea.
Yet Ankara has developed a complicated web of interdependence wFinland and Sweden formally applied to join NATO on May 18ith Moscow, primarily because it wants to gain strategic autonomy from the West.
Personally, Erdogan and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin have faced many challenges in their relationship in recent years.
Turkey is the only NATO member that has not closed its airspace to Russia or imposed economic sanctions on the country.
Putin’s all-out invasion of Ukraine has demonstrated Turkey’s strategic importance once again.
Erdogan has hosted a series of peace negotiations in Istanbul, thereby establishing himself as the only NATO leader who can facilitate such events.
