The only obstacle to the Finnish bid to join NATO is Turkey and the demands of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
What weapon do the Finns have in their hands to respond to Turkey? A boycott of Turkish goods.
This is supported by the Finnish MP Mikko Karna who called on the Finns to change their plans for holidays in Turkey, not to eat Turkish kebabs, not to use Turkish products and not to buy Turkish-made cars.
I will eat kebab for a month every day after we are approved to Nato by Turkey.
We do not harbour terrorists. PKK is a terrorist organization in whole EU.
— Mikko Kärnä 🇫🇮🇺🇦 (@KarnaMikko) May 19, 2022
The Turkish Daily Sabah even reported that the MP claimed that the Kurdish doner kebab is much better than the Turkish kebab. But he also said he would eat Turkish kebab every day for a month if Ankara voted in favour of Finland joining NATO.
Regarding Turkey's allegations, Karna said that his country does not host terrorists. "PKK is a terrorist organization in whole EU," he recalled.
Erdoğan has called on Finland and Sweden to denounce the PKK and its affiliates and to end arms exports restrictions imposed by the two countries on Turkey in late 2019.
"Turkey's insults are Erdoğan's cold game of power and I am absolutely convinced that Finland and Sweden will be accepted into NATO and by Turkey without any problems," Karna said.
The Turkish president told NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg by phone that Turkey's security concerns regarding Sweden and Finland's membership bids were based on just and legitimate grounds, his office said on Friday.
"Both countries should make it clear that they have stopped supporting terrorism, that they have lifted sanctions against Turkey, and that they are ready to show alliance solidarity," Erdoğan was cited as telling Stoltenberg in the call.
Elsewhere, the Turkish president on Wednesday said that Turkey had cancelled a bilateral cooperation platform, dubbed the High-Level Strategic Council, with Greece, adding in a speech to legislators from his governing party that Ankara wanted a foreign policy that “had strong character”.
“You keep putting on shows for us with your planes,” he said, referring to a dispute with Athens about airspace over islands in the Aegean Sea. “What are you doing? Pull yourself together. Do you not learn lessons from history?”
“Don’t try to dance with Turkey. You’ll get tired and stuck on the road. We are no longer holding bilateral talks with them. This Greece will not see reason,” Erdoğan said.
On Tuesday, Mitsotakis told reporters after a European Union summit that he had briefed his EU counterparts about Turkey’s “aggressiveness” and “provocations which cannot be tolerated by Greece or the European Union”.
“I will not be involved in a game of personal insults,” he said.
READ MORE: Ukraine accuses Turkey of buying grain stolen by Russia.
