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		</div><p>Turkey’s president has flatly stated that his country will oppose Sweden and Finland joining Nato.</p>
<p>President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told a group of Turkish youth in a video released on Thursday: “We have told our relevant friends we would say ‘no’ to Finland and Sweden’s entry into Nato, and we will continue on our path like this.”</p>
<p>Turkey’s approval of Finland and Sweden’s application to join the western military alliance is crucial because Nato makes decisions by consensus.</p>
<p>Each of its 30 member countries has the power to veto a membership bid.</p>
<p>Mr Erdogan has said Turkey’s objection stems from grievances with Sweden’s – and to a lesser degree with Finland’s – perceived support of the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and an armed group in Syria that Turkey sees as an extension of the PKK.</p>
<p>The conflict with the PKK has killed tens of thousands of people since 1984.</p>
<p>Turkey also accuses Sweden and Finland of harbouring the followers of Fethullah Gulen, a US-based Muslim cleric whom the Turkish government blames for a 2016 military coup attempt.</p>
<p>A full recording of Mr Erdogan’s conversation with the youth for the Commemoration of Ataturk, Youth and Sports Day, a national holiday that marks the beginning of the Turkish War of Independence in 1919, is expected to be released on Thursday night.</p>
<p>It was not immediately clear when the conversation took place.</p>
<p>In the remarks made available earlier on Thursday, Mr Erdogan accused the two prospective Nato members and especially Sweden of being “a focus of terror, home to terror”.</p>
<p>He claimed their links to terror organisations meant they should not be part of the transatlantic alliance.</p>
<p>Turkish officials, including the president, have also pointed to arms restrictions on Turkey as a reason for Ankara’s opposition to the two countries becoming part of Nato.</p>
<p>Several European countries, including Sweden and Finland, restricted arms exports to Turkey following the country’s cross-border operation into north-east Syria in 2019 with the stated goal of clearing the border area of Kurdish militants.</p>
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