Sweden fulfilled significant part of responsibilities for NATO bid: Turkey

ANKARA: Sweden has fulfilled an important part of demands by Turkey for the Nordic country's NATO bid, Turkish parliament speaker Numan Kurtulmus said.

"We see that Sweden also fulfills a significant part of its responsibilities," Xinhua news agency quoted Kurtulmus as saying to reporters.

"If we are to act jointly within an alliance, Turkey has extremely legitimate expectations," he said, noting that Ankara expected relevant countries to end "any kind of support" to terrorist groups and ban what it called anti-Turkish activities on their lands.

Sweden should act carefully and meticulously against Islamophobia in Europe, he noted, adding that his country is not against NATO's expansion.

The Turkish parliament's foreign affairs committee approved Sweden's NATO bid following deliberation in December last year, a first step necessary for putting it to a full parliament vote.

Kurtulmus said that it was now up to the general assembly of Parliament to decide the timing of the vote after it returns from recess on January 16.

A full parliamentary approval is needed before the protocol can be signed into law by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Turkey approved Finland's NATO bid in March last year but has slow-walked Sweden's accession, demanding the Nordic country further address Ankara's security concerns.

Turkey is under pressure from the US to approve Sweden's accession to NATO, but Ankara has been holding up its ratification to press Washington to allow the sale of F-16 fighter jets.