The Trilateral Agreement between Turkey, Finland and Sweden and the Silence of Human Rights: The Need to Apply the MoU in Light of Human Rights and Refugee Law Protections,eiltalk.org

On 28 June, 2022, leaders of Turkey, Finland and Sweden met in Madrid to agree on a trilateral agreement that paves the way for Finland and Sweden’s NATO membership. The Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) that resulted from the meeting contains concrete commitments by Finland and Sweden to cooperate with Turkey in the fields of counter-terrorism, organised crime and threats to national security. The commitments, as outlined in the MoU, include adopting new national regulatory frameworks for arms exports, supporting Turkey’s involvement in the initiatives of the European Union’s Common Security and Defence Policy, including the PESCO Project on Military Mobility, fighting ‘disinformation’, and judicial cooperation in matters of counter-terrorism, in particular regarding groups or individuals affiliated to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party or Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan (PKK). This post will focus on this last point, and will highlight some critical aspects of the MoU where it fails to make any reference to human rights and refugee law safeguards when considering deportation or extradition requests. Läs artikel