Turkey is preparing to approve Finland’s entry into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), regardless of Sweden’s status.
According to two official sources cited by Reuters, the Turkish parliament will ratify Finland’s entry into the Atlantic Alliance as early as April, before the country’s parliamentary and presidential elections on May 14.
Finnish President Sauli Niinisto and Finnish Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto will meet with Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan this Friday in Ankara to discuss reconstruction efforts after the earthquakes that devastated the country and “the accessions of Finland and Sweden to NATO”.
The two Nordic countries have been NATO candidates for a year, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and still hope to become members of the organization until the next NATO summit, scheduled for July in Lithuania.
Turkey has resisted the accession of Stockholm (each state has veto power), which criticizes Sweden, among other things, for not extraditing people accused of belonging to Kurdish organizations declared by the Turkish authorities as terrorist groups.
The situation worsened after a diplomatic incident in January, when an extremist burned the Koran, Islam’s holy book, in Stockholm, causing negotiations to be suspended for several weeks.
Hungary and Turkey are the only members of the Atlantic Alliance that have not yet ratified the entry of the two Nordic countries, but in the case of Budapest, the reason is presented as a matter of solidarity with Turkey.
The remaining member states signed the agreement for the entry of Sweden and Finland on July 5, 2022, but the accession process will only be complete when all states ratify the protocol.
Source: TSF
