Three months after Russian President Vladimir Putin sent his forces into Ukraine, the governments of Finland and Sweden formally applied for NATO membership on May 18 as a hedge against future Russian military aggression.
It was supposed to be a fait accompli.
Erdogan’s demands mostly center on extraditing Turkish foes, such as members of the militant, terrorist-labeled Kurdistan Workers' Party , which Turkey has been fighting for 38 years, and followers of Turkish cleric Fethullah Gulen, whom he alleges was behind a 2016 coup attempt to oust him. Finlandon Turkey’s list and is reportedly evaluating seven more, while Sweden passed a new antiterrorism law.
“It is entirely conceivable that Turkey could, for any number of reasons, say yes to Finland but no to Sweden for now,” Former Defense Department official Evelyn Farkas, now executive director of the McCain Institute think tank, told Yahoo News that the delay poses a “real danger [that] puts the security of Europe and of millions of people at risk.”“Recall when we first heard speculations about Swedish and Finnish applying to NATO, Putin was very menacing and threatening,” noted Çandar.
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