Turkey acknowledges: Sweden and Finland are close to joining NATO

Turkey has announced that Sweden and Finland have made “progress” towards NATO membership, according to a joint statement after a meeting in Stockholm on Friday.

In a statement, the three countries welcomed “the intensification of cooperation … and the progress made by Finland and Sweden in the context of compliance with the memorandum” signed on the sidelines of the Madrid summit in June.

Respect the triple note

“Sweden has largely complied with the tripartite memorandum and is making progress” towards NATO membership, he said via Swedish negotiating official Oskar Stenstrom tweeted after the meeting announced by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan earlier this month.

Interestingly, Finland and Sweden abandoned decades of military non-alignment and rushed to apply for NATO membership last May in the aftermath of the Russian war.

Terms of Turkey

All NATO member states, with the exception of Hungary and Turkey, have ratified the two countries’ membership. New alliance members need unanimous approval.

“Indulgence with the Labor Party”

Turkey, in in particular, he accuses Sweden and Finland of being lenient towards the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and its allies, such as the People’s Protection Units (YPG).

During a visit to Ankara in early November, Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Christerson pledged to address concerns expressed by Turkey in the context of the fight against terrorism in order to remove any obstacles to Sweden’s accession in the Atlantic.

And the Swedish parliament approved in mid-November an amendment to the constitution that allows Sweden to step up the fight against terrorism, which will enter in effective in January.