Inquiries will be sent to Sweden and Finland after agreeing to address Ankara’s “terrorist” concerns, the minister said.
Turkey has identified 33 people it wants to extradite from Sweden and Finland and will renew efforts to take them into custody after signing a memorandum of understanding with the Nordic nations, Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag told the media on Wednesday.
“The documents from six PKK members and six FETO members are waiting in Finland, while those from 10 FETO members and 11 PKK members are waiting in Sweden,“The official was quoted by the news agency Anadolu as saying. “We will write about their extradition again after the agreement and remind them.”
The abbreviations he used stand for the Kurdish militant movement Kurdistan’s Labor Party and the US-based Turkish priest Fethullah Gulen’s influence network. Ankara regards them both as terrorist organizations. The PKK waged a decades-long guerrilla war against the Turkish government while FETO was accused by Ankara of organizing the 2016 coup attempt in Turkey.
The Turkish government has accused Sweden and Finland of hosting “terrorists” and threatened to block their offer to join NATO. The roadblock was apparently lifted this week, after the three nations signed a memorandum of understanding, in which the European nations promised to address Turkish problems.
Bozdag warned that the document did not mean that the accession process for Sweden and Finland was over and said that his country would fight to prevent the “an incubator for terrorist organizations.” He aimed to fund networks of targeted groups allegedly active in Europe, which the two governments promised to eradicate.
Finnish President Sauli Niinisto said on Tuesday that the memorandum does not contain a list of people scheduled to be extradited. He also said that his government would make its decision on whether to hand over suspects to Turkey based on European law. Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson made similar comments about the politics in her country.
Source: sn.dk