NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg hailed Turkey’s decision to go ahead with ratifying Finland’s membership in the Atlantic Alliance on Friday, hoping that Sweden will also get a ‘green light’ soon.
“I welcome the decision taken today by Turkey to proceed with the ratification of Finland’s accession to NATO. This will strengthen the security of Finland, it will strengthen the security of Sweden and it will strengthen the security of NATO,” he said in a statement in Brussels Organization Secretary General, who hopes that Turkey’s National Assembly will vote on the ratification “as soon as possible”.
Stoltenberg played down the fact that, contrary to what was initially expected, Finland and Sweden did not join at the same time -since Stockholm has not yet managed to overcome the objections raised by Ankara-, stating that “the most important thing is that both Finland and Sweden they quickly become full members of NATO, they don’t join or they don’t join at exactly the same time.”
The secretary general also highlighted the close relationship Sweden already has with the Alliance and what this means in terms of its security, reiterating that the allies would respond in the event of an attack on the country, even if it is not yet a full member of the Alliance. The alliance. the organization.
“Last year’s decision to invite both Finland and Sweden fundamentally strengthened their relationship with NATO. As a result, their security was vastly improved. They are sitting around the NATO table, integrating into our political and military structures, and conducting more exercises with the allies”, he said.
Stoltenberg also recalled that “both countries received bilateral security guarantees from many NATO countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany and France”, so “it is inconceivable that NATO would not respond if Finland or Sweden is attacked”. .
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced today, after receiving Finnish President Sauli Niinisto in Ankara, that Turkey will ratify Finland’s application for membership in NATO, which will speed up the country’s accession to the Atlantic Alliance.
This week, the Swedish prime minister had already acknowledged that the likelihood of Finland entering the North Atlantic Treaty Organization before Sweden was high, especially given Turkey’s objections to Stockholm’s entry.
“The probability that accession will happen at different rates is high,” Conservative Ulf Kristersson told a news conference today.
The two Nordic countries have been NATO candidates for a year, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and are still waiting to become members of the organization until the next NATO summit, scheduled for July in Vilnius, Lithuania.
However, while the road to Helsinki seems open and unimpeded, the Stockholm accession has met with resistance from Turkey (each state has a veto right), 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.
Even so, the Hungarian parliament began examining the issue earlier this month, with the support of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s government, and NATO hopes a “quick decision” will come out of this.
Prospects for a change of heart on Turkey’s part are much more uncertain as outgoing President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in power for 20 years, will run for a new term in elections on May 14.
Sweden’s hope is that the road to NATO will open after the elections in Turkey, where the opposition presents a single candidate against Erdogan.
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
