Istanbul, 10 July 2023 (dpa/MIA) — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan called for the European Union accession talks for his country to be revived in order to clear the path for Sweden's admission to NATO, which Erdoğan has vetoed so far.

"First pave the way for Turkey into the European Union, then we pave the way for Sweden, as we did for Finland," he said on Monday before leaving for the upcoming NATO summit in Vilnius.  

Erdoğan's statement comes as a surprise after he had continuously cited Sweden's insufficient action to combat "terrorist organizations" as the main reason for Turkey's opposition to NATO membership.

He is mainly referring to the banned Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which is on the terror list in Turkey, the European Union and the United States.

In response to the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, Sweden and Finland both applied to join the defence alliance in May 2022. In April, Finland joined NATO, but Sweden continued to be blocked by Turkey and Hungary.

Turkey, Finland and Sweden had already reached an agreement at the NATO summit in Madrid last summer. At the time, they signed a memorandum in the Spanish capital in which the two Nordic countries addressed the concerns Turkey had raised from the get-go.

However, Erdoğan has now reiterated that in his view Sweden must continue to fulfil the conditions in the memorandum in order to make progress on NATO membership.

The EU began accession talks with Turkey back in 2005. However, they were put on hold a few years ago because Brussels saw unacceptable developments in the rule of law in Turkey.

Erdoğan was re-elected as president in May after being in power for 20 years.

The race was considered unfair, among other things because the media is largely under government control and political opponents imprisoned.