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Sweden to Seek Constructive Progress with Turkey over NATO Bid

MV-22 Osprey assault support aircraft, assigned to 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit, approaches to land on the flight deck of the Wasp-class amphibious assault ship USS Kearsarge (LHD 3) on June 8, 2022, during the BALTOPS 22 Exercise in the Baltic Sea. (AFP)
MV-22 Osprey assault support aircraft, assigned to 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit, approaches to land on the flight deck of the Wasp-class amphibious assault ship USS Kearsarge (LHD 3) on June 8, 2022, during the BALTOPS 22 Exercise in the Baltic Sea. (AFP)
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Sweden to Seek Constructive Progress with Turkey over NATO Bid

MV-22 Osprey assault support aircraft, assigned to 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit, approaches to land on the flight deck of the Wasp-class amphibious assault ship USS Kearsarge (LHD 3) on June 8, 2022, during the BALTOPS 22 Exercise in the Baltic Sea. (AFP)
MV-22 Osprey assault support aircraft, assigned to 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit, approaches to land on the flight deck of the Wasp-class amphibious assault ship USS Kearsarge (LHD 3) on June 8, 2022, during the BALTOPS 22 Exercise in the Baltic Sea. (AFP)

Sweden will look to make constructive progress in talks with Turkey on Ankara's objections over the Nordic country's application to join the NATO defensive alliance, Foreign Minister Ann Linde said on Friday.

Finland and Sweden applied to join NATO last month in response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine but face opposition from Turkey, which accuses them of supporting and harboring Kurdish militants and other groups it deems terrorists.

The objections caught Finnish, Swedish and many NATO officials by surprise and have dimmed prospects for rapid progress on the membership bids ahead of a NATO summit in Madrid later this month.

"Our application has received broad support among NATO members," she said in a foreign policy declaration in the Swedish parliament. "Our ambition is to, in a constructive spirit, make progress on the questions that Turkey has raised."

Linde added that there should be no doubts that Sweden stood together with allies against terrorism.

Sweden's government survived a no-confidence vote on Tuesday with the help of a lawmaker whose demands for support for Kurds in Northern Syria could complicate its attempts to join NATO, all of whose members must approve any new entrants.

Ankara has also hit out at Swedish authorities for halting arms exports to Turkey in 2019 as the country launched a military operation in northern Syria.

While not referring directly to Turkey, Linde said Swedish membership in NATO could "change the conditions for arms exports within our national regulatory framework".

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Türkiye Insists on Two States for Ethnically Divided Cyprus as the UN Looks to Restart Peace Talks

UN Secretary General's Special Representative in Cyprus Colin Stewart, center, Cyprus' President Nikos Christodoulides, left, and the Turkish Cypriot leader Ersin Tatar talk as they attend the UN's end of year reception at Ledras Palace inside the UNbuffer zone in the divided capital Nicosia, Cyprus, Tuesday, Dec. 10, 2024. (AP Photo/Petros Karadjias)
UN Secretary General's Special Representative in Cyprus Colin Stewart, center, Cyprus' President Nikos Christodoulides, left, and the Turkish Cypriot leader Ersin Tatar talk as they attend the UN's end of year reception at Ledras Palace inside the UNbuffer zone in the divided capital Nicosia, Cyprus, Tuesday, Dec. 10, 2024. (AP Photo/Petros Karadjias)
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Türkiye Insists on Two States for Ethnically Divided Cyprus as the UN Looks to Restart Peace Talks

UN Secretary General's Special Representative in Cyprus Colin Stewart, center, Cyprus' President Nikos Christodoulides, left, and the Turkish Cypriot leader Ersin Tatar talk as they attend the UN's end of year reception at Ledras Palace inside the UNbuffer zone in the divided capital Nicosia, Cyprus, Tuesday, Dec. 10, 2024. (AP Photo/Petros Karadjias)
UN Secretary General's Special Representative in Cyprus Colin Stewart, center, Cyprus' President Nikos Christodoulides, left, and the Turkish Cypriot leader Ersin Tatar talk as they attend the UN's end of year reception at Ledras Palace inside the UNbuffer zone in the divided capital Nicosia, Cyprus, Tuesday, Dec. 10, 2024. (AP Photo/Petros Karadjias)

Türkiye on Wednesday again insisted on a two-state peace accord in ethnically divided Cyprus as the United Nations prepares to meet with all sides in early spring in hopes of restarting formal talks to resolve one of the world’s most intractable conflicts.
Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said Cyprus “must continue on the path of a two-state solution” and that expending efforts on other arrangements ending Cyprus’ half-century divide would be “a waste of time.”
Fidan spoke to reporters after talks with Ersin Tatar, leader of the breakaway Turkish Cypriots whose declaration of independence in 1983 in Cyprus’ northern third is recognized only by Türkiye.
Cyprus’ ethnic division occurred in 1974 when Türkiye invaded in the wake of a coup, sponsored by the junta then ruling Greece, that aimed to unite the island in the eastern Mediterranean with the Greek state.
The most recent major push for a peace deal collapsed in 2017.
Since then, Türkiye has advocated for a two-state arrangement in which the numerically fewer Turkish Cypriots would never be the minority in any power-sharing arrangement.
But Greek Cypriots do not support a two-state deal that they see as formalizing the island’s partition and perpetuating what they see as a threat of a permanent Turkish military presence on the island.
Greek Cypriot officials have maintained that the 2017 talks collapsed primarily on Türkiye’s insistence on permanently keeping at least some of its estimated 35,000 troops currently in the island's breakaway north, and on enshrining military intervention rights in any new peace deal.
The UN the European Union and others have rejected a two-state deal for Cyprus, saying the only way forward is a federation agreement with Turkish Cypriot and Greek Cypriot zones.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is preparing to host an informal meeting in Switzerland in March to hear what each side envisions for a peace deal. Last year, an envoy Guterres dispatched to Cyprus reportedly concluded that there's no common ground for a return to talks.
The island’s Greek Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides says he’s ready to resume formal talks immediately but has ruled out any discussion on a two-state arrangement.
Tatar, leader of the breakaway Turkish Cypriots, said the meeting will bring together the two sides in Cyprus, the foreign ministers of “guarantor powers” Greece and Türkiye and a senior British official to chart “the next steps” regarding Cyprus’ future.
A peace deal would not only remove a source of instability in the eastern Mediterranean, but could also expedite the development of natural gas deposits inside Cyprus' offshore economic zone that Türkiye disputes.