MADRID, 29 Jun. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Turkish Minister of Justice, Bekir Bozdag, has expressed this Wednesday that the country plans to request the extradition of 33 suspected terrorists who are currently in Sweden and Finland after the memorandum signed by the parties within the framework of the NATO summit to pave the way for the accession of Stockholm and Helsinki to the Alliance.
In a press conference, the minister clarified that both countries will be notified of these requests and explained that Ankara will require Finland to extradite six members of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and six other alleged members of the influential Kurdistan Workers’ Party movement. cleric Fetullah Gulen, whom Turkey accuses of having orchestrated the attempted coup that took place in 2016.
Likewise, the country will request that another eleven members of the PKK – considered a terrorist organization by Ankara – and ten members of the FETO, a name used by the Turkish authorities to refer to the nebula of organizations and people linked to Gulen, be extradited from Sweden.
The minister’s statements come a day after the three countries signed a trilogue agreement by virtue of which Ankara lifts its veto on the accession of Helsinki and Stockholm to the Atlantic Alliance. Thus, he stressed that “Turkey is willing to comply with the points included in the memorandum for the future.”
“The memorandum is significant and shows how Turkey’s foreign policy disposition has positive results,” said the Turkish minister, who pointed out that Turkey “will seek the full implementation of the agreement.”
The leaders of the three countries held a four-way meeting in Madrid on Tuesday with the participation of NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, on the eve of the Atlantic Alliance summit in the Spanish capital.
Stoltenberg thanked the parties for the “spirit in which they have gone to the negotiations” and stressed that, within the Atlantic Alliance, “it has always been shown that differences do not matter” because the countries can “sit down to the table and find common ground and solutions”.
