Sweden’s top diplomat: We’ll fulfil deal with Türkiye on NATO

Sweden's center-right government will fulfil all requirements under a deal with Türkiye to join NATO and will concentrate external relations to its immediate neighborhood while dropping the previous administration's "feminist foreign policy," the country's top diplomat has said.

Foreign Minister Tobias Billstrom said the new government shares Türkiye's concern about PKK, which is considered a terrorist organization in Türkiye, Europe and the United States.

"There will be no nonsense from the Swedish government when it comes to the PKK," Billstrom told the Associated Press in an interview. "We are fully behind a policy which means that terrorist organizations don't have a right to function on Swedish territory."

'Everything has to be done in legally safe way'

Türkiye stalled Sweden and Finland's historic bid to join NATO over concerns that the two countries, Sweden in particular, had become a safe haven for members of the PKK and affiliated groups.

Under a memorandum of understanding signed by Sweden's previous left-leaning government at a NATO summit in June, Sweden and Finland committed to not support Kurdish groups in Syria that Türkiye says are affiliated with the PKK and to lift arms embargos on Türkiye imposed after its incursion in northern Syria in 2019.

"Everything which is written into the trilateral memorandum, and which has been agreed upon by all three parties, should be fulfilled, needs to be fulfilled by all the three parties," Billstrom said, adding that "everything also has to be done in a legally safe way."

Paul Levin, director of the Institute for Turkish Studies at Stockholm University, said the new government may have an advantage over the previous Social Democratic government...