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"Could come in the night": Erdogan threatens Greece - and wants to play Finland against Sweden

2022-10-07T13:10:02.230Z


"Could come in the night": Erdogan threatens Greece - and wants to play Finland against Sweden Created: 07/10/2022 15:03 By: Florian Naumann, Bedrettin Bölükbasi Recep Tayyip Erdogan in his statement after the European summit. © IMAGO/Katerina Sulova Approaching the European Summit? Not at all: Erdogan is rumbling again. Apparently, he made a change of strategy when Finland and Sweden joined N


"Could come in the night": Erdogan threatens Greece - and wants to play Finland against Sweden

Created: 07/10/2022 15:03

By: Florian Naumann, Bedrettin Bölükbasi

Recep Tayyip Erdogan in his statement after the European summit.

© IMAGO/Katerina Sulova

Approaching the European Summit?

Not at all: Erdogan is rumbling again.

Apparently, he made a change of strategy when Finland and Sweden joined NATO.

Prague/Ankara – Recep Tayyip Erdogan is threatening again: the Turkish President issued “warnings” on the sidelines of the European summit in Prague, of all places.

The meeting was actually supposed to be used for discussions - videos showed Erdogan, among other things, relaxed joking with his counterpart Emmanuel Macron.

But after the appointment, Erdogan went into confrontation both in the dispute with Greece over Mediterranean islands and in the struggle over Sweden, a candidate for NATO membership.

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis reacted calmly, at least in tone.

Erdogan rumbles again after the rapprochement summit: "We could come in the middle of the night"

"Whatever country bothers us, whatever country attacks us, our reaction will always be to say: we could undoubtedly come in the middle of the night," Erdogan said in Prague on Thursday.

There, Turkey took part in the founding summit of the so-called European Political Community.

In the past, the Turkish president had often used the phrase that one could suddenly come at night in relation to military operations - for example in Syria or Iraq.

Erdogan issued a similar warning in early September.

At the time, he was referring to the alleged alignment of a Greek air defense system with Turkish fighter jets.

He also accused Athens of militarizing Greek islands in the East Aegean.

Athens denied Ankara's allegations, citing, among other things, its right to self-defense.

Relations between the two NATO partners have long been strained.

Mitsotakis reacted personally to Erdogan's statements.

"Greece never provokes, Greece responds with confidence and we do so every time we are provoked," the Greek daily

Kathimerini

quoted the prime minister as saying.

According to Mitsotakis, Erdogan's words showed the participants of the summit the true "provocateur".

At a meeting with Germany's Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock (Greens), he had recently tried to demonstrate composure.

Greek government sources have now told the media that Mitsotakis has appealed to Erdogan to end the discussion about the sovereignty of the Aegean islands.

The Prime Minister called on Erdogan to behave "responsibly", to give up his "extreme rhetoric" and to accept a dialogue.

According to Greek sources, Erdogan then left the room.

However, the newspaper

Protothema

pointed out that Erdogan's press conference was due at that time anyway.

Erdogan wants to play Finland and Sweden off against each other: "Completely different relationships"

Erdogan again threatened the Swedish government with a blockade of NATO accession.

"As long as terrorist organizations are demonstrating on the streets of Sweden and as long as there are terrorists in the Swedish parliament, Turkey will not have a positive attitude towards Sweden," Erdogan said.

The head of state was referring to allegations that Swedish politicians sympathized with members of the banned Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK) and supporters of the Gülen movement and did not follow their activities sufficiently.

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"I saw clearly that the relations between Finland and Turkey are very different from those of Sweden and Turkey because Finland is not a country where terrorists roam freely, while Sweden is a country where terrorists roam freely."

Recep Tayyip Erdogan after the European summit, quoted by Swedish tabloid Expressen

Erdogan's attitude towards Finland appears to be different: he had "a really good conversation" with Prime Minister Sanna Marin, the president said, according to a report in the tabloid

Expressen

.

"I saw clearly that the relations between Finland and Turkey are very different from those of Sweden and Turkey because Finland is not a country where terrorists roam freely," Erdogan said.

Turkey "will do everything" if NATO decides to allow Finland to join.

After a long internal struggle, the two Scandinavian countries had deliberately made their way into the alliance together.

"Shame for Sweden": Turkey is outraged by satire - Andersson refers to "free press"

Sweden's Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson reacted cautiously: on Thursday she spoke of a "good dialogue", as reported by the broadcaster SVT.

There were no new signals from Turkey regarding NATO, it said.

Andersson did not want to put a moderate scandal about a report in the satirical news program "Svenska Nyheter", "Swedish News", on the agenda.

There moderator Kristoffer Appelqvist said last Friday: "If I want to turn the 'Swedish News' into 'Kurdish News', then I'll do it." According to the broadcaster, the Swedish-Kurdish comedian Kadir Meral then mocked Erdogan for around ten minutes – in Kurmanji, one of the three Kurdish languages.

The pro-government Turkish newspaper

Sabah

wrote of a "shame for Sweden".

"If that comes up, I can say that we have a free press in Sweden," Andersson said on the matter.

Sweden wants to join NATO: Turkey blocks

Sweden and neighboring Finland had already applied for NATO membership in mid-May as a result of the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine.

However, they can only be admitted if all of the current 30 NATO members ratify the so-called accession protocols.

At the end of June it initially looked as if the dispute over Sweden and Finland's alleged support for "terrorist organizations" had been settled.

However, Turkey is now taking the position that agreements made at the time have not yet been fulfilled, particularly by Sweden.

The case is also rated as "sensitive" in Sweden.

The concessions to Erdogan were also met with domestic criticism.

Alongside Hungary, Turkey is now the only country that has not yet ratified the accession protocols for Sweden and Finland.

So far, however, there have been no threats from Hungary not to complete the process.

(

dpa/fn/bb

)

Source: merkur

All news articles on 2022-10-07

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