Turkey will demand from Finland and Sweden the extradition of 33 people belonging to the PKK and Fetö movements whom it considers to be terrorists, announced Wednesday, June 29 the Minister of Justice Bekir Bozdag.
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This request comes the day after the signing of a memorandum between the three countries opening the access of the two Nordic nations to the Atlantic Alliance.
“Under the new agreement, we will ask Finland for the extradition of six PKK members and six Fetö members;
and to Sweden to extradite ten members of Fetö and eleven of the PKK”, declared the minister whose remarks were reported by the local media.
The Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) is classified as a terrorist by Ankara and its Western allies.
Fetö, is the acronym of the movement founded by the preacher Fethullah Gülen, based in the United States and considered by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan as the instigator of the July 2016 coup attempt.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan met for several hours on Tuesday, before the opening of the NATO summit in Madrid, with his Finnish counterpart Sauli Niinistö and Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson.
Turkey blocked the membership of these two countries by accusing them of sheltering militants of the two movements concerned.
At the end of this summit, also in the presence of the Secretary General of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, the memorandum was presented paving the way for a future formal agreement to enlarge the Alliance in the face of threats from Russia.
“Turkey got what it wanted”, that is to say the “full cooperation” of the Nordic countries in the fight against terrorism, triumphed the Turkish presidency in a press release.