President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Friday that Türkiye’s parliament will start ratifying Finland’s accession to NATO, lifting the biggest remaining hurdle to enlarging the Western defense 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 Ankara’s blessing after taking concrete steps to keep its promises to crack down on what Ankara sees as terrorists and to free up defense exports.
The three countries signed a deal in Madrid last year laying out steps to overcome Türkiye’s concerns over accession, but Ankara has said Sweden has not gone far enough.
Talks between Erdogan, Stoltenberg
Erdogan spoke by phone with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and said Türkiye was determined to continue talks with Sweden, with progress directly related to the concrete steps that it takes, the Turkish presidency said.
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.
“We have decided to initiate the ratification of Finland’s accession process to NATO in our parliament,” Erdogan told reporters after meeting with Niinisto, adding he hoped parliament would endorse the bid before May 14 elections.
Niinisto said he welcomed the decision and called it “very important” for Finland, which shares a long and remote border with Russia. He added it was important that neighbor Sweden also joined the alliance.
Swedish Foreign Minister Tobias Billstrom said Sweden still hoped to be accepted into NATO by the time of the alliance’s meeting in Vilnius in July.
Sweden’s expectation
“Our partners support us, both in making sure that we can become members of NATO as soon as possible and in ensuring our security until such time as we become a full member,” he said.
“It is a question of when Sweden becomes a member, not if.”
In response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Sweden and Finland applied last year to join NATO but faced unexpected objections from ^Türkiye, which joined in 1952.
Ankara says Stockholm harbors members of what Türkiye calls terrorist groups, particularly the PKK, a charge Sweden denies.
Türkiye wants Sweden to extradite a number of individuals who it says are terrorists, but some of those applications have been rejected.
Billstrom said cases were decided by the courts. “There are going to be decisions that can be positive but can also be negative from Turkey’s point of view, and that’s just how it is,” he said.
Ankara suspended talks in January after a far-right politician burned a copy of the Muslim holy book, the Koran, in Stockholm, but lower-level talks resumed in Brussels last week.
Amid simmering tensions with Sweden, Erdogan signaled in January that Turkey could endorse Helsinki ahead of Stockholm. Washington and other NATO members had hoped the two Nordic countries would join the alliance at a NATO summit set for July 11 in Vilnius.
Erdogan’s blessing for Finnish membership comes nearly a year after he shocked members with a threat to veto the bids, and two months before elections that are seen as the most consequential vote in Turkey’s history.
Türkiye’s parliament is expected to ratify Finland before it closes in mid-April ahead of the parliamentary and presidential votes scheduled for May 14.
