AA / Istanbul
The President of the Republic of Türkiye, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, recalled that regarding the process of Finland’s and Sweden’s accession to NATO, Türkiye has so far only given the green light “to the process of invitation” from these two countries.
The Turkish Head of State answered questions from journalists on Friday following taking part in the great weekly prayer at the Ali Mosque in Istanbul.
He returned to the results of the NATO summit in Madrid, which ended on Thursday.
For Ankara, the main thing is the memorandum signed with Sweden and Finland, concerning the fight once morest terrorism in particular, an important step forward for Türkiye to lift its opposition to the accession of these two countries to the Atlantic Alliance.
However, the Turkish president insisted on recalling that membership has not yet been acquired.
“This is the invitation process to join the Alliance. We have so far said YES to the invitation,” he insisted.
Indeed, NATO has officially invited Sweden and Finland to join, but it must now be ratified by the parliaments of the 30 member countries.
Ankara will therefore carefully monitor the implementation by these two countries of the memorandum signed in Madrid.
On the tensions with Greece, Erdogan warned the Greek authorities, indicating that the Turkish air forces will respond as necessary if Greek warplanes continue to violate Turkish airspace, while insisting that the Türkiye does not seek to wage war with its neighbor.
* Translated from Turkish by Tuncay Çakmak
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