Sweden is convinced that Turkey will approve its request to join the NATO military alliance, but cannot fulfill all the conditions that Ankara has set for supporting this request, the Swedish prime minister said on Sunday.
"Turkey has confirmed that we have done what we said we would do, and it also demands things that we cannot or do not want to give," Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said during a conference in Sweden.
Finland and Sweden signed a tripartite agreement with Turkey in 2022, aiming to overcome Ankara's objections to their membership of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
The two countries applied in May to join NATO in response to Russia's attack on Ukraine, but Turkey objected and accused the countries of harboring militants, including representatives of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, which Turkey has declared as an illegal political organization.
A problematic issue has been the extradition of those persons that Turkey considers as terrorists. Ankara expressed disappointment at a decision late last year by the Swedish Supreme Court to block an extradition request for a journalist with suspected links to Islamic cleric Fetullah Gulen, whom Turkey blames for an attempted coup.