After Turkey agreed to Finland and Sweden joining NATO, the Finnish Ministry of Justice refused to review Turkish extradition requests that had already been rejected. As the ministry representative Sonja Varpasuo said on Thursday, Ankara called for a new decision on six rejected extradition requests.
But the decisions are final. Turkey was therefore informed “that the cases cannot be reassessed”.
In response to the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine, Finland and Sweden broke with their decades-long tradition of military alliance neutrality and applied for NATO membership in May. Each of the 30 member countries must ratify accession. Turkey is the only NATO country to have threatened a veto.
The government in Ankara has accused Sweden and Finland of harboring dozens of “terrorist suspects” from Turkey and is demanding their extradition. These are mainly members of the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and the movement of the Islamic preacher Fethullah Gülen, whom President Recep Tayyip Erdogan blames for the 2016 coup attempt.
In an agreement signed by Sweden and Finland at a NATO summit in Madrid in late June, the two countries pledged to “swiftly and thoroughly” examine Turkish extradition requests. Erdogan then gave up his opposition to the admission of the two Nordic countries.
However, Turkey has not yet ratified the accession protocols. In August, Sweden announced a first deportation as part of the agreement, but Turkey’s Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag described this as “inadequate”.
With broad parliamentary support, the Bundestag gave the green light for Sweden and Finland to join NATO. “We are witnessing how European history is being written,” said Federal Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht (SPD) in the debate.
Source: Bundestag
