Sharjah24 - AFP: Finland's foreign minister reiterated the country's desire to join NATO alongside Sweden on Monday in response to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's comments that Ankara may accept Helsinki's application without its neighbor to the north.
"Our strong desire in Finland has been and still is to join NATO together with Sweden," Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto told reporters in Helsinki, adding: "our position remains the same."
Ankara has refused to ratify the two countries' NATO membership bids, primarily because of Sweden's refusal to extradite dozens of suspects that Ankara links to outlawed Kurdish fighters and a failed 2016 coup attempt.
Sweden has a bigger Kurdish diaspora than Finland and a more serious dispute with Ankara.
Turkey has also reacted with fury to a decision by the Swedish police to allow a protest at which a far-right extremist burned a copy of the Koran outside the Turkish embassy in Stockholm earlier this month.
It has been outraged, too, by a Swedish prosecutor's decision not to press charges against a pro-Kurdish group that hung an effigy of Erdogan by its ankles outside Stockholm City Court.
Following those incidents, Ankara last week suspended the two countries' NATO accession talks.
The decision has threatened to derail the bloc's hopes of expanding to 32 countries at a summit planned for July in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius.
Erdogan has dug in his heels, heading into a tightly contested May 14 election in which he is trying to energise his conservative and nationalist support base.
On Sunday, he drew a clear distinction between the positions taken by Sweden and Finland in the past few months.
"If necessary, we can give a different response concerning Finland. Sweden will be shocked when we give a different response for Finland," Erdogan said.
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