Finnish Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto has expressed his country's desire to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), along with Sweden, and not separately.
This came in a press conference held by Haavisto, today, Monday, in which he commented on statements made by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan yesterday regarding Finland's membership in NATO.
Erdogan said during a meeting with a youth gathering in Bilecik, central Turkey, on Sunday, "We can give Finland a different message if necessary, and this will shock Sweden," referring to the possibility of Ankara agreeing to Helsinki's accession without Stockholm to NATO.
Haavisto commented in this regard: "What we understood from President Erdogan's statements is that Turkey wants to accelerate the process of our joining NATO."
However, he added, "We have taken positive steps regarding joining NATO in the past ten months. Sweden is our closest ally in the field of defense industries and foreign policy, and we want to enter the alliance together," as he put it.
Haavisto stated that he had contacted the Foreign Ministers of Turkey, Mevlut Cavusoglu, and Sweden's Tobias Bilstrom, following President Erdogan's statement, noting that the approval of Finland and Sweden's membership would benefit NATO member states.
Haavisto himself said last week that his country should study the possibility of joining NATO without Sweden, a day after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan ruled out Ankara's support for Sweden's candidacy for NATO membership following the incident of burning the Holy Qur'an in Stockholm by a right-wing extremist, which angered Ankara and capitals. Arabic and Islamic.
After the incident of burning the Qur'an, Ankara decided to postpone the meeting of the tripartite mechanism between Turkey, Sweden and Finland related to the accession of the latter two to NATO.
On Monday, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu reiterated President Erdogan's position, saying that Turkey may evaluate Finland's application to join NATO in isolation from Sweden.
"It is fair to distinguish between a problematic country (referring to Sweden) and a less problematic one. We can evaluate NATO (Finnish and Swedish) applications separately if the alliance and these countries make a decision on this," Cavusoglu said.
Sweden and Finland applied last year to join the alliance after Russia's attack on Ukraine, and all member states must agree to join.
Turkey and Hungary have not yet ratified the two countries' membership.
Turkey, in particular, accuses Sweden and Finland of being lenient with the PKK and its allies, similar to the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) in Syria.
In contrast to Sweden, in recent months Turkey has expressed no major objections to Finland joining NATO.