Swedish Foreign Minister Anne Linde has denied providing any financial or military support to Kurdish groups or organizations in Syria, which Turkey is using to support its opposition to Sweden and Finland’s aspirations to join NATO.

She explained to the Afton Bladet newspaper that “Sweden is a major humanitarian donor to the Syrian crisis through global allocations to humanitarian organizations”, noting that “cooperation in northeast Syria is mainly carried out through the United Nations and international organizations. providing targeted support to the Syrian Kurds or political or military structures in the northeast of Syria, but the population of these areas, of course, participate in these aid projects.”

Notably, Turkey has included five specific guarantees that Sweden is demanding, especially what it says will be “an end to political support for terrorism, the elimination of a source of financing for terrorism, and an end to arms support” for the banned PKK. The demands also called for the lifting of sanctions against Turkey and global cooperation against terrorism.