Turkey is demanding that Sweden must hand over and extradite "terrorists" in its midst before seeking to join the NATO alliance. In fresh televised remarks on Thursday, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that Swedish and Finnish diplomats shouldn't even bother trying to dispatch delegations to Turkey if they aren't willing to stop supporting Kurdish PKK 'terrorists'.

"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," Erdogan stressed in the remarks coming a day after Turkey blocked a fast-tracked effort to speedily process submission of the Scandinavian countries' Wednesday applications.