ANKARA, Turkey (SONNA) \u2014 Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan\u00a0reaffirmed Wednesday that Turkey won\u2019t allow Sweden to join the\u00a0NATO military alliance\u00a0as long as the Scandinavian country permits\u00a0protests desecrating Islam\u2019s holy book\u00a0to take place.<\/p>\n
Turkey, which had already been holding off approving Sweden and\u00a0Finland\u2019s membership\u00a0in the Western military alliance, has been infuriated by a series of separate demonstrations in Stockholm. In one case a solitary anti-Islam activist burned the Quran outside the Turkish Embassy, while in an unconnected protest\u00a0an effigy of Erdogan\u00a0was hanged. Even before that, Ankara had been pressing Sweden and Finland to crack down on exiled members of Kurdish and other groups it sees as terrorists, and to allow arms sales to Turkey.<\/p>\n
Turkey has\u00a0indefinitely postponed a key meeting\u00a0in Brussels that would have discussed the two Nordic countries\u2019 NATO entry.<\/p>\n
\u201cSweden, don\u2019t even bother! As long as you allow my holy book, the Quran, to be burned and torn, and you do so together with your security forces, we will not say \u2018yes\u2019 to your entry into NATO,\u201d Erdogan said in a speech to his ruling party\u2019s legislators.<\/p>\n
Swedish government officials have distanced themselves from the protests, including by a far-right anti-Islam activist who burned copies of the Quran in Stockholm and Copenhagen, Denmark, while also stressing that the demonstrations are protected by freedom of speech.<\/p>\n
On Tuesday, Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson denounced the activists who carried out the demonstrations as \u201cuseful idiots\u201d for foreign powers who want to inflict harm on the Scandinavian country as it seeks to join NATO.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have seen how foreign actors, even state actors, have used these manifestations to inflame the situation in a way that is directly harmful to Swedish security,\u201d Kristersson told reporters in Stockholm, without naming any countries.<\/p>\n
Sweden and neighboring Finland abandoned decades of nonalignment and applied to join NATO in the wake of\u00a0Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine. All NATO members except Turkey and Hungary have ratified their accession, but unanimity is required.<\/p>\n
In a television interview Wednesday, Erdogan suggested that Sweden needs to prevent Quran burning protests.<\/p>\n
Source: AP<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" ANKARA, Turkey (SONNA) \u2014 Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan\u00a0reaffirmed Wednesday that Turkey won\u2019t allow Sweden to join the\u00a0NATO military alliance\u00a0as long as the Scandinavian country permits\u00a0protests desecrating Islam\u2019s holy book\u00a0to take place. Turkey, which had already been holding off approving Sweden and\u00a0Finland\u2019s membership\u00a0in the Western military alliance, has been infuriated by a series of separate […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":120,"featured_media":412968,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[78],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-412967","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\/412967","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=412967"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412967\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":412969,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412967\/revisions\/412969"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/412968"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=412967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=412967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=412967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}