Last week, Turkey broke off tripartite talks on Finland’s and Sweden’s membership applications in response to the burning of a Koran outside its embassy in Stockholm. Rasmus Paluda, a Danish-Swedish far-right decision-maker. Helsingin sanomat newspaper was revealed Last week, the decision-maker received support for his protest Chang Fricka Swedish journalist who has collaborated with an affiliate of the Russian state-controlled news network Russia Today.
Haavisto hinted in the aftermath of the event that Finland is also considering what to do in the event that Turkey ratifies its application, but not Sweden. “Of course we have to look at the situation. Has anything happened to prevent the Swedish efforts to move forward in the longer term?
On Saturday, he continued to downplay the statement in an interview with the public broadcasting company, assessing that nothing irreversible has happened. He refused to give a direct answer to the question whether he could understand the fact that Finland joined NATO before Sweden.
“This is very speculative. Nothing like this is on the horizon at the moment,” he said.
According to him, there was also no need to ask whether the union could ratify Finland’s membership instead of both Finland and Sweden. He reminded that the security of the Baltic Sea is seen as a whole among NATO members.
“For NATO’s defense planning, Sweden will be a very important security component in the region,” he told YLE.
According to Haavisto, Finland and Sweden also promote security in NATO. – We have had our own functioning defense and a large reserve all this time. Sweden also has advanced weapon technology. Finland and Sweden also promote security in NATO and add to this their own quite strong defense means. Since we are not yet in NATO, we naturally rely on our own defense.
President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Sunday suggested that Turkey is ready to give the green light to Finland’s membership application, but not Sweden’s.
“If necessary, we could give a different message about Finland. Sweden will be shocked when we give a different message from Finland, he said quoted saying In an event televised by the Associated Press.
“But Finland should not make the same mistake.”
Aleksi Teivainen – HT
Source: The Nordic Page