SONNA – Sweden\u2019s government should \u201cact differently\u201d if it wants to clinch Turkish support for its bid to join NATO, Hungary\u2019s foreign minister said Tuesday, adding that a recent Quran-burning protest outside the Turkish embassy in Stockholm was \u201cunacceptable.\u201d<\/p>\n
Peter Szijjarto made the remark at a news conference following talks with his Turkish counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu in Hungary\u2019s capital Budapest. Both diplomats addressed the Jan. 21\u00a0anti-Turkish protest\u00a0that increased tensions between Ankara and Stockholm as Sweden seeks Turkey\u2019s approval to join the military alliance.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs a Christian and as a Catholic, I must say that burning of a holy book of another religion is an unacceptable act,\u201d Szijjarto said, and criticized a statement by Sweden\u2019s prime minister that while the burning of the Quran was inappropriate and \u201cdeeply disrespectful,\u201d it fell under Swedish freedom of speech protections.<\/p>\n
\u201cStating that the burning of a sacred book is part of freedom of speech is just plain stupidity,\u201d Szijjarto said, adding that \u201cperhaps they (Sweden) should act differently than that\u201d if they want to secure Ankara\u2019s backing.<\/p>\n
The meeting in Budapest came as Turkey and Hungary remain the only two NATO members that haven\u2019t approved bids by Sweden and Finland to join the military alliance. The northern European neighbors \u2014 one of which, Finland, shares a border with Russia \u2014 dropped their long-standing military neutrality and sought NATO membership in response to Moscow\u2019s war in Ukraine.<\/p>\n
A unanimous vote of all 30 NATO members is necessary for admitting new countries.<\/p>\n
Cavusoglu said Turkey shares Hungary\u2019s wish for NATO enlargement, but that it was now \u201cimpossible for us to confirm (Sweden\u2019s) accession\u201d into the alliance. He called the Quran-burning protest a \u201cprovocation which will take us nowhere, it can only lead to chaos.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ankara has also said it\u2019s displeased with Sweden\u2019s efforts to crack down on groups that Turkey considers to be terrorist or pose a threat to the country, including Kurdish groups. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said that\u00a0Sweden should not expect Turkey\u2019s support\u00a0in its membership bid.<\/p>\n
Hungary\u2019s government was expected to vote on accepting Sweden and Finland into NATO by the end of last year. The issue will be on the Hungarian parliament\u2019s agenda during its first session of the year in February, Szijjarto said.<\/p>\n
Source: AP<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" SONNA – Sweden\u2019s government should \u201cact differently\u201d if it wants to clinch Turkish support for its bid to join NATO, Hungary\u2019s foreign minister said Tuesday, adding that a recent Quran-burning protest outside the Turkish embassy in Stockholm was \u201cunacceptable.\u201d Peter Szijjarto made the remark at a news conference following talks with his Turkish counterpart Mevlut […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":120,"featured_media":412949,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[78],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-412948","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412948","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/120"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=412948"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412948\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":412950,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412948\/revisions\/412950"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/412949"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=412948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=412948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=412948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}