Turkey expects Sweden to fulfill its promises in the context of Madrid’s tripartite memorandum on its accession to NATO, Tayyip Erdoğan said on Friday, a few days before the Atlantic Alliance summit in Vilnius.

“How can a country that never keeps a distance from horror to contribute to NATO?’ asked the Turkish president according to Turkish media.

“The essence of the alliance must be the formation of mutual solidarity, trust… We expect the promises made to us at the (NATO Summit in) Madrid to be fulfilled,” Tayyip Erdogan clarified.

Turkey will receive “the best decision” regarding the Sweden’s accession to NATO, he said anyway.

“We will discuss it with our partners during the summit that will be held on Tuesday in Vilnius and we will take the best decision, whatever it is.” he stated Erdogan who is preparing to welcome his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky in Istanbul within the day.

The Turkish president, who has blocked Sweden from joining NATO from May 2022, accusing it of allegedly leniency towards Kurdish fighters who have taken refuge on its soil, said he was in favor of an “open door policy”.

NATO member Turkey is the last country along with Hungary to still not ratify the Nordic country’s membership in the alliance despite several steps Stockholm has taken in response to demands made by Ankara, including constitutional reform and the adoption of a new anti-terror law.

On the initiative of the Secretary General of the Alliance Jens Stoltenberg, Erdogan and Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristerson will meet in Vilnius on Monday, ahead of the start of the summit, in a bid to lift Turkey’s veto on Sweden’s membership

Before his departure for Turkey, from Bratislava, Zelensky spoke of a lack of unity within NATO on the question of the membership of Sweden and Ukraine, which he said represented a “threat” to global security.