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Erdogan Says 'No' to Sweden and Finland's NATO Bid

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan speaks during a news conference in Kyiv, Ukraine, February 3, 2022. REUTERS/Valentyn Ogirenko
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan speaks during a news conference in Kyiv, Ukraine, February 3, 2022. REUTERS/Valentyn Ogirenko
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Erdogan Says 'No' to Sweden and Finland's NATO Bid

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan speaks during a news conference in Kyiv, Ukraine, February 3, 2022. REUTERS/Valentyn Ogirenko
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan speaks during a news conference in Kyiv, Ukraine, February 3, 2022. REUTERS/Valentyn Ogirenko

Turkey will oppose Sweden and Finland joining NATO, the country's president flatly stated in a video released Thursday.

“We have told our relevant friends we would say ‘no’ to Finland and Sweden’s entry into NATO, and we will continue on our path like this,” President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told a group of Turkish youth in the video for Commemoration of Atatürk, Youth and Sports Day, a national holiday.

Turkey’s approval of Finland and Sweden's application to join the Western military alliance is crucial because NATO makes decisions by consensus. Each of its 30 member countries has the power to veto a membership bid.

Erdogan has said Turkey's objection stems from grievances with Sweden's - and to a lesser degree with Finland’s - perceived support of the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, and an armed group in Syria that Turkey sees as an extension of the PKK.

Turkey also accuses Sweden and Finland of harboring the followers of Fethullah Gulen, whom the Turkish government blames for 2016 military coup attempt.

In the remarks, Erdogan accused the two prospective NATO members and especially Sweden of being “a focus of terror, home to terror.”

He accused them of giving financial and weapons support to the armed groups, and claimed the countries' alleged links to terror organizations meant they should not be part of the trans-Atlantic alliance.

The United States struggled Wednesday to get clarity from Turkey over the severity of its opposition to Finland and Sweden joining NATO.

In a meeting with Secretary of State Antony Blinken at the United Nations, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu offered mixed signals. He affirmed his country’s support for NATO’s “open-door” policy and its understanding of Finland and Sweden's desire to join the alliance following Russia's invasion of Ukraine. But he also repeated Erdogan’s demands that Turkey’s security concerns about the candidate nations be addressed.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters in Berlin on Sunday after discussions with Turkish officials that “Turkey has made it clear that their intention is not to block membership.” Meanwhile, Blinken and other foreign ministers, including Germany’s top diplomat, Annalena Baerbock, expressed absolute confidence that all NATO members, including Turkey, would welcome the two newcomers.

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France Holds Day of Mourning for Mayotte Islands Devastated by Cyclone

French President Emmanuel Macron (C-R) and his wife Brigitte Macron (C-L) stand for a minute of silence at the Elysee Palace during a day of national mourning for the lives lost after a cyclone hit the Indian Ocean territory of Mayotte, in Paris, France, 23 December 2024. (EPA)
French President Emmanuel Macron (C-R) and his wife Brigitte Macron (C-L) stand for a minute of silence at the Elysee Palace during a day of national mourning for the lives lost after a cyclone hit the Indian Ocean territory of Mayotte, in Paris, France, 23 December 2024. (EPA)
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France Holds Day of Mourning for Mayotte Islands Devastated by Cyclone

French President Emmanuel Macron (C-R) and his wife Brigitte Macron (C-L) stand for a minute of silence at the Elysee Palace during a day of national mourning for the lives lost after a cyclone hit the Indian Ocean territory of Mayotte, in Paris, France, 23 December 2024. (EPA)
French President Emmanuel Macron (C-R) and his wife Brigitte Macron (C-L) stand for a minute of silence at the Elysee Palace during a day of national mourning for the lives lost after a cyclone hit the Indian Ocean territory of Mayotte, in Paris, France, 23 December 2024. (EPA)

France held a national day of mourning for Mayotte, its Indian Ocean territory devastated by a violent cyclone on Dec. 14, beginning in the morning on Monday with a minute of silence for the scores of residents left dead by the storm.

Cyclone Chido was the worst storm to hit Mayotte's two main islands in 90 years, and authorities have said that perhaps thousands of people may have been killed in its wake, though the government's death toll stands at 35.

To commemorate Mayotte's losses, French flags were lowered to half-mast. Separately, flags were flown at half-mast in Brussels and Strasbourg because of Mayotte, as well as following attacks last week on a German Christmas market and in a Croatian school.

"It is a communion in mourning," Prime Minister Francois Bayrou told reporters. He said the day showed solidarity for those in Mayotte, and that France was "present to reconstruct Mayotte and make sure the people of Mayotte feel surrounded by the entire country."

Following the storm, officials say corpses may have been buried quickly per religious custom, before they could be counted, and that many of the people killed may have been undocumented immigrants.

Mozambique has said 94 people died in the disaster, while 13 were killed in neighboring Malawi.

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The slow pace of aid and delays in the arrival of clean water have angered residents of Mayotte, France's poorest overseas territory located between Madagascar and Mozambique about 8,000 km (4971 miles) from the mainland, with some heckling President Emmanuel Macron during his visit last week.

For Mohamed Abdou, a doctor in Pamandzi, the day of French mourning was a political stunt and did not do enough to account for historic neglect leading up to this point.

"Whether in terms of hospitals, the lack of water infrastructure, electricity, and so on ... at this point, we need to say 'mea culpa' and acknowledge mistakes were made," he told Reuters, speaking from his town in the south of Mayotte's smaller island.

Francois-Noel Buffet, France's acting minister of overseas territories, told France 2 that water - a flashpoint even before the disaster - had made it to the island, saying: "We are not missing water. We have water, notably bottled water. We have a problem with distribution."

Buffet said he expected a special law on the reconstruction of Mayotte to be introduced in early January.

In Paris, Bayrou, France's fourth prime minister this year, is expected to unveil his cabinet Monday evening, though the timing was uncertain. The French presidency said the announcement would not take place before 6:00 p.m. (1700 GMT), to take into account the day of mourning.

Estelle Youssouffa, a lawmaker for Mayotte, criticized the government in an interview with Radio France Internationale for possibly making the announcement on the day of mourning, accusing Bayrou, who had not yet visited the islands, of "humiliating us a second time."