Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. File photoANKARA, May 23.Turkey's position on NATO expansion is not hostile to the alliance, Ankara takes the fight against terror as a basis, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said. Earlier, the Financial Times wrote that Turkey blocked the start of the process of considering the application for Finland and Sweden to join NATO. Erdogan said that Ankara cannot say «yes» to the membership of Finland and Sweden in NATO, because it cannot believe their assurances about relations with representatives of the Kurdistan Workers' Party banned in Turkey. If Turkey agrees, NATO, according to Erdogan, «will not be a security organization, but will become a place where there will be many representatives of terrorists.» Countries cannot be accepted into the alliance without the unanimous approval of all its members. «If countries wishing to join NATO turn to history, they will see that Turkey's struggle against the threat emanating from the East has a great contribution and significance for them. At the heart of our position NATO expansion is based not on hostility to the alliance, but on our clear position on the fight against terror,» Erdogan said in an address to the people after the meeting of the Cabinet of Ministers. Russia has repeatedly noted that NATO is aimed at confrontation. Press Secretary of the President of the Russian Federation Dmitry Peskov stated that further expansion of the alliance would not bring greater security to Europe, NATO has an aggressive character. At the same time, he noted that he did not consider the entry of Sweden and Finland into NATO an existential threat to Russia. Russian President Vladimir Putin, in a conversation with Niiniste, noted that abandoning the traditional policy of military neutrality would be erroneous, since there are no threats to Finland's security. In his opinion, a change in the country's foreign policy may have a negative impact on Russian-Finnish relations, which for many years were built in the spirit of good neighborliness and partnership cooperation, were mutually beneficial. jpg» />Erdogan opposed NATO expansion on existing terms
