Turkey has no response from Finland, Sweden on extraditions: Minister
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Turkish Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag has said that Turkey has not received responses from Sweden and Finland on the extradition of members of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and has sent the Nordic nations a new application.
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From left to right background: NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Finland's President Sauli Niinisto, Sweden's PM Magdalena Andersson, Turkish FM Mevlut Cavusoglu, Finnish Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto, and Sweden's FM Ann Linde before signing a memorandum in which Turkey agrees to Finland and Sweden's membership of the defense alliance in Madrid, Spain on Tuesday, June 28, 2022 (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)
Turkey has not received responses from Sweden and Finland on the extradition of members of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and the organization of Islamic preacher Fethullah Gulen (FETO), deemed "terrorist" by Ankara, and has sent the Nordic nations a new application, Turkish Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag said on Saturday.
"We have not received a positive response to our extradition requests. We have sent the new application and reminded of our demands," Bozdag told reporters.
Earlier this week, the minister said that an extradited individual from Scandinavia "had nothing to do with terrorist crimes," and that Sweden and Finland did not satisfy Turkey's extradition requests.
On May 18, three months after the Ukraine crisis began, Finland and Sweden submitted NATO membership bids, ending decades of neutrality. However, Turkey refused their applications, and President Tayyip Erdogan stated that Ankara could not consent as long as they supported Kurdish "terrorists".
On the first day of the alliance's summit in the Spanish capital Madrid on June 28, Turkey agreed to support Finland and Sweden's joint membership of NATO after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's office considered that "Turkey got what it wanted" from Sweden and Finland before agreeing to back their drives to join the NATO alliance.
On July 10, Sweden made a list of 10 Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) members to extradite to Turkey following the signature of the memorandum in Madrid.
The two Nordic countries have agreed to lift their embargoes on weapons deliveries to Turkey, which were imposed in response to Ankara's 2019 military incursion into Syria.
