Ankara urges Sweden to extradite ‘terrorists’

Sweden must extradite « terrorists » if it wants to join NATO, said the Turkish Minister of Justice after the announcement, considered disappointing by Ankara, of a first extradition to Turkey of a Turk convicted of common law facts. “If they think they can make Turkey believe that they have kept their promises by extraditing common criminals, they are wrong,” Minister Bekir Bozdag said in an interview with the daily Milliyet published on Thursday. Since mid-May, Turkey, a member of NATO, has been blocking the process of enlargement of the Atlantic Alliance to Sweden and Finland, accusing them in particular of protecting Kurdish fighters from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and the People’s Protection Units (YPG), considered terrorists by Ankara. At the end of June, the Turkish, Swedish and Finnish Foreign Ministers had however signed a memorandum of understanding opening the access of the two Nordic nations to the Atlantic Alliance. Turkey had the next day made to the two countries extradition requests for 33 people, most considered « terrorists » by Ankara.