Finland’s President Sauli Niinisto on Thursday visited Türkiye’s Kahramanmaras province, the epicenter of the lethal Feb. 6 earthquakes.
Niinisto visted a container metropolis in Kahramanmaras and spoke to quake survivors.
On Feb. 6, magnitude 7.7 and seven.6 quakes struck 11 provinces-Adana, Adiyaman, Diyarbakir, Elazig, Hatay, Gaziantep, Kahramanmaras, Kilis, Malatya, Osmaniye, and Sanliurfa-in southern Türkiye.
The catastrophe has claimed almost 50,000 lives and affected greater than 13.5 million individuals in Türkiye, in addition to hundreds extra in northern Syria.
Niinisto is scheduled to fulfill President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday, with discussions set to deal with Finland’s NATO membership bid.
“I know Erdogan for a long time. I am sure he has important messages,” mentioned Niinisto.
Asked about whether or not Finland and Sweden’s NATO accession bids can be thought of individually, he mentioned his nation “has fulfilled all of the expectations.”
“We applied for NATO membership and negotiated with the Turkish government, which started in Madrid. I think we have done everything necessary. We are now waiting for approval,” he mentioned.
Abandoning many years of army non-alignment, Finland and Sweden formally utilized to affix NATO final May.
However, Türkiye, a longstanding NATO member, requested the 2 Nordic states to take concrete motion in opposition to terror teams just like the PKK and FETO, which perform propaganda, funding and recruitment actions in these nations.
In June, Finland, and Sweden signed a memorandum with Türkiye to handle Ankara’s safety considerations, and senior diplomats and officers from the three nations have held numerous conferences since then to debate the implementation of the trilateral settlement.
Source: www.anews.com.tr
