Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan met today in Vilnius with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Christson ahead of tomorrow’s NATO summit.
The parties issued a joint statement in which they clarified several points for the benefit of both Turkey and Sweden, since the statement stated that “since the last NATO summit, Turkey and Sweden have worked together to resolve Ankara’s security issues, and as part of this process, Sweden has made amendments to its constitution, amended its laws and expanded its cooperation with Turkey in the field of counter-terrorism against the PKK, and resumed arms exports to Turkey, all of which are the points stipulated in the 2022 tripartite memorandum.
The statement added that the Turkish and Swedish sides “agreed to continue their cooperation through the joint permanent tripartite mechanism that was established at the NATO summit in Madrid in 2022, and through the new bilateral security pact, under which the annual meeting will be held between two parties at the ministerial level, and working groups will be established as needed.”
The statement indicated that Sweden would present at the first meeting of this security agreement a road map as a basis for continuing to fight terrorism in all its forms and manifestations in order to implement all the provisions of the tripartite memorandum, including article 4, and Sweden also confirms that will not support the “protection units” of the People, the Democratic Union Party and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party.
The statement stated that “Both sides agreed that bilateral cooperation against terrorism is a long-term effort and will continue until Sweden joins NATO.”
According to the statement, the parties agreed to commit themselves to working together to lift all sanctions and restrictions on defense trade and investment between the allies.
The statement also highlighted the agreement of Turkey and Sweden to strengthen economic cooperation between the two countries through the Joint Economic and Trade Committee (JETCO), as well as the desire to expand opportunities to increase the level of bilateral trade and mutual investment.
Sweden confirmed that it will support efforts to intensify Turkey’s accession to the European Union, including the modernization of the customs union between the EU and Turkey and the issuance of visas.
The statement concluded that, given the need to contain and protect the Euro-Atlantic region, Turkey will send the Swedish accession protocol to the Grand National Assembly and will work with it to secure its ratification.
Source: RT