Turkey’s extradition requests to Finland increased in 2025, with Ankara asking Helsinki to hand over 12 Turkish citizens, according to documents obtained by Yle. The rise has renewed concern in Finland that some of the cases are less about ordinary criminal justice and more about the targeting of dissidents, government critics and people accused by Turkey of links to movements Ankara classifies as terrorist.
Turkey sent 12 extradition requests to Finland in 2025
Turkey asked Finland to extradite 12 of its citizens last year, up from seven requests in 2024. In total, Finland received 15 extradition requests from non-EU third countries in 2025, which means Turkey accounted for the vast majority of them.
According to Yle’s reporting, most of the Turkish requests concerned people Ankara considers terrorists, especially alleged supporters of the Gülen movement, which Turkey blames for the failed coup attempt of 2016. The EU has not recognised the movement as a terrorist organisation, and Finnish authorities have continued to examine each request under domestic law rather than on the basis of Turkish political claims.
Why Finland has rejected most Turkish extradition cases
Finland has rejected almost all of Turkey’s requests. The main reasons have been weak evidence, legal standards that do not match Finnish law, or conduct that would not amount to a crime in Finland.
Yle reported that in some Turkish files, alleged evidence of terrorism included having an account at a certain bank, using the encrypted messaging app ByLock, or subscribing to a specific newspaper. In another case cited by the broadcaster, Turkey sought the extradition of a man accused of insulting President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan online.
Under Finnish extradition rules, authorities can refuse a request if the alleged act is not punishable in Finland, if the offence is minor, or if the legal threshold for extradition is not met. That has left Helsinki reluctant to comply with Turkish demands in politically sensitive cases.
The NATO deal still shapes Finland-Turkey tensions
The increase in Turkey’s extradition requests to Finland has revived scrutiny of the 2022 memorandum signed by Finland, Sweden and Turkey during the Nordic NATO accession process. At the time, Helsinki and Stockholm promised closer cooperation with Ankara on terrorism-related matters in exchange for Turkey lifting its objections to their NATO applications.
Toni Alaranta, a senior research fellow at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs, told Yle that Ankara may believe the political agreement made it easier to secure transfers from Finland. In practice, however, Finland’s legal position has not changed: extradition decisions still depend on Finnish law, the evidence presented and the risk of injustice or politically motivated prosecution.
This gap between political expectations in Ankara and legal practice in Helsinki has remained a source of friction since Finland joined NATO in April 2023.
Fears of political persecution in cases linked to Gülen and Erdoğan critics
The broader concern in Finland is that some of these extradition requests could expose individuals to political persecution rather than a fair criminal process. Alaranta described Turkey’s approach to these cases as a “witch hunt”, arguing that it often affects ordinary people and critics of Erdoğan’s government, including people with no operational role in the Gülen movement.
That concern is reinforced by wider European criticism of Turkish terrorism cases built around indirect or highly disputed indicators such as ByLock use. Human rights bodies and European courts have repeatedly raised questions about due process, fair trial standards and the broad use of anti-terror legislation in Turkey after 2016.
For Finland, the issue is therefore not only bilateral. It also touches on a wider Nordic and European debate: how democratic states should cooperate on security with strategic partners while avoiding becoming instruments of transnational repression.
Finland’s refusals show the limits of Ankara’s leverage
The latest figures suggest that Turkey is continuing to test the limits of the post-NATO arrangement with Finland. But the Finnish response also shows the limits of Ankara’s leverage.
So far, Helsinki has largely held to a legalistic line, rejecting requests that do not meet Finnish standards. That approach may continue to irritate Turkey, but it also underlines a central principle in European extradition practice: cooperation on security does not override protections against politically motivated prosecution.
As Finnish courts and ministries continue to assess such cases, the issue is likely to remain a sensitive part of Finland-Turkey relations, especially whenever national security, asylum, dissent and NATO commitments intersect.
