BRUSSELS, March 17 (Reuters) – NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg on Friday hailed Turkey’s decision to move ahead with ratifying Finland’s bid for membership of the military alliance and said he was confident Sweden would join soon too.
In a telephone interview with Reuters, Stoltenberg said President Tayyip Erdogan’s announcement that Turkey’s parliament will start ratifying Finland’s accession to NATO was “a good day for everyone that believes in NATO enlargement”.
“Finnish membership will strengthen NATO, it will strengthen Finnish security. It will also strengthen Swedish security,” he said.
In response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Sweden and Finland applied to join NATO but faced objections from Turkey, which joined in 1952.
President Tayyip Erdogan said on Friday Turkey’s parliament will start ratifying Finland’s accession to NATO, lifting the biggest remaining hurdle to enlarging the Western defence alliance as war rages in Ukraine, though he held off approving Sweden’s bid.
Speaking in Ankara alongside Finnish counterpart Sauli Niinisto, Erdogan said Helsinki had won Turkey’s blessing after taking concrete steps to keep its promises to crack down on what Ankara sees as terrorists and to free up defence exports.
The three countries signed a deal in Madrid last year laying out steps to overcome Turkey’s concerns over accession, but Ankara has said Sweden has not gone far enough.
Erdogan spoke by phone with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and said Turkey was determined to continue talks with Sweden, with progress directly related to the concrete steps that it takes, the Turkish presidency said.
But Turkey has kept Sweden’s ratification on hold, arguing that Stockholm harbours members of what Turkey calls terrorist groups, particularly the Kurdish militant group PKK – a charge Sweden denies.
Stoltenberg said Erdogan had told him on Friday evening that he was willing to continue consultations on Sweden’s membership.
“I’m confident also that Sweden will join soon, and I will work hard for that,” he said.
NATO officials say having both Sweden and Finland as members will bring two highly capable militaries into the alliance and strengthen its northeastern flank.
Abandoning long traditions of neutrality, Finnish and Swedish leaders concluded after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that membership of NATO, with its collective defence pact, would make their countries safer.
Stoltenberg said he hoped Finland would now join NATO before Turkey’s elections in May and that Sweden could be a member by the time of an alliance summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, in July.
Hungary is the only other NATO member not to have ratified the two membership applications. Hungary’s ruling party has said it backs the two bids but has delayed formal steps to approve them.
Stoltenberg said he had urged Turkey and Hungary to ratify both membership applications.
The parliaments of all 30 NATO members must ratify newcomers. Finland would represent the first enlargement since North Macedonia joined the trans-Atlantic pact in 2020.
(Reporting by Andrew Gray; editing by Grant McCool)
