Ankara: Sweden's new Prime Minister Ulf Kristerson will meet with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday in an effort to gain Turkey's approval for his country's application to join NATO.

Following the Russian military invasion of Ukraine in February, Sweden and Finland abandoned their long-standing military non-aligned policies and submitted applications to join the military alliance, over concerns that Russian President Vladimir Putin would allow them to do more. can target.

Turkey, which joined NATO in 1952, has been delaying support for these bids because it believes Sweden and, to a lesser extent, Finland, are ignoring Ankara's security concerns.

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Erdogan's government is pressuring both countries to take action against those it considers terrorists, including followers of the banned Kurdistan Workers' Party and suspected of planning a failed 2016 coup in Turkey.

Turkey has also called for the lifting of an arms embargo imposed after Turkey's incursion into northern Syria in 2019 to fight militant Kurds.

Sweden announced last month that it would lift the ban, a move intended to gain Ankara's support. After the ceremonial reception, Christerson will meet with Erdogan at the Presidential Palace in Turkey.

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On Monday, Christerson posted on Facebook that "we will do much more in Sweden through new legislation that offers entirely new opportunities to prevent participation in terrorist organizations" days in the day of his visit.

To aid NATO's ability to counter terrorism, Christerson wrote that Sweden would also support the Anti-Terrorism Fund.
The accession protocol must be formally ratified by all 30 NATO members before Finland and Sweden can join the alliance. Only the parliaments of Hungary and Turkey have not done so yet.

The NATO secretary general visited Turkey last week and urged the country to address its concerns about Finland and Sweden, arguing that the Nordic neighbors had gone above and beyond to address Ankara's concerns.

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Turkish officials have said the two countries will meet again only after meeting their demands, which were agreed in a joint memorandum. The 10-article memorandum was made public ahead of the NATO summit in June, when Turkey threatened for weeks to veto the applications of Sweden and Finland.