Turkey to renew extradition requests to Finland, Sweden after NATO deal

Turkey will renew requests for Sweden and Finland to extradite individuals it considers terrorists after the countries reached a deal over the Nordic nations' NATO membership bids, Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag said on Wednesday. Turkey had opposed their bids over what it called support for Kurdish militants and others it views as terrorists, as well as over arms embargoes and unfulfilled extradition requests.

Turkey will renew requests for Sweden and Finland to extradite individuals it considers terrorists after the countries reached a deal over the Nordic nations' NATO membership bids, Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag said on Wednesday.

Turkey had opposed their bids over what it called support for Kurdish militants and others it views as terrorists, as well as over arms embargoes and unfulfilled extradition requests. On Tuesday, the three nations signed a deal for Ankara to remove its block, while the candidates pledged not to support the Kurdish militant PKK and YPG groups or the network of U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, which Ankara says staged a 2016 coup attempt and which it labels a terrorist organization with the acronym FETO.

"The dossiers of six PKK members, six FETO members await in Finland, while those of 10 FETO members and 11 PKK members await in Sweden. We will write about their extradition again after the agreement and remind them," Bozdag was cited as saying by the state-owned Anadolu news agency. In the memorandum text the three countries signed on Tuesday, Finland and Sweden agreed to "address (Turkey's) pending deportation or extradition requests of terror suspects expeditiously and thoroughly...in accordance with the European Convention on Extradition".

"We have not been presented any claims for now, as far as I know," Finnish President Sauli Niinisto told reporters on Wednesday in Madrid. On Tuesday, he said the signed memorandum did not list any individuals for extradition and that Finland would continue to respect the European rules in its extradition decisions.

"We don't in fact have any unsettled extradition requests at the moment. We have processed 14 out of 16 (requests by Turkey) and two decisions have been blocked by the fact that the targets have not been located," Niinisto told reporters. Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson said Sweden would continue to follow local and international law in its extraditions.

"It depends on what information we do get from Turkey in this area," she told Reuters. Turkey, a NATO member of more than 70 years standing with the alliance's second-biggest army, has long demanded that allies halt support for the YPG, a key U.S. ally in the fight against Islamic State in Syria. It has repeatedly traded barbs with the United States, France, Germany, the Netherlands and others over the matter.

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