Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan now holds the key to NATO’s ‘open door’. But so far he has refused to give it up.
Meanwhile, the NATO summit is fast approaching. Tuesday to Thursday next week, heads of state and government from the alliance’s 30 member countries will gather for a summit in the Spanish capital.
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On Monday, representatives of Turkey, Sweden and Finland met in Brussels in an attempt to clear up disagreements. Progress was made there, but the parties did not reach a final solution, Stoltenberg’s chief of staff Stian Jenssen told NTB afterwards.
No new meetings
On Friday afternoon, no new meetings were agreed between Turkey, Sweden and Finland, NTB is informed by sources close to the process. It is emphasized that the parties are in regular dialogue.
“Right now there is a fairly intensive and continuous dialogue with Turkey at different levels and between different people, and we naturally hope to move forward on this issue,” Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson told NTB this week.
Within NATO, there are expectations that the parties will sit down again either before or during the summit to find a final solution to the long-running conflict between Turkey and the two Nordic NATO candidate countries.
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NATO diplomatic sources with whom NTB has spoken do not dare to predict whether there will be a breakthrough before or during the Madrid meeting.
If that does not happen, NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg risks that the Turkey riot will overshadow the summit. Sweden and Finland will probably also be put on hold when important decisions are made, even though the two countries have been invited to Madrid.
Promised fast process
The fall has been increased by Stoltenberg himself communicating that the admission process for Sweden and Finland would start before the summit. Sources in NATO indicated early on that it could take as short as two weeks from the applications were sent to Sweden and Finland received a formal invitation from the governments of the NATO countries.
“If Finland decides to apply, they will be warmly welcomed in NATO, and the application process will be quick and smooth,” Stoltenberg said in a statement on the same day as Finland’s president and prime minister said yes to NATO.
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The next day, the President of Turkey announced that he is not a supporter of NATO membership for Sweden and Finland.
Stoltenberg has subsequently acknowledged that the process has taken longer than NATO expected.
He has also emphasized that the summit has never been a deadline for the membership process. Earlier, the NATO chief stated that his goal is to solve the Turkish entanglement within Madrid.
Disagree on terrorist organizations
Sweden and Finland submitted their NATO applications on 18 May. To become a member, the 30 NATO countries must approve them in what is described as the formal ratification process.
But before this process can begin at all, the 30 ambassadors to the NATO Council must sign a so-called accession protocol, an invitation to the alliance. Turkey will not do that, and thus the application process for Sweden and Finland is “fixed” here.
Erdogan has presented a list of requirements that must be met before Turkey can accept Swedish and Finnish NATO membership. Turkey claims, among other things, that Sweden provides political support to the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK) and the Kurdish military force in Syria, YPG. The PKK is considered by the entire EU, including Sweden, as a terrorist organization. Turkey, for its part, equates the PKK with the YPG, and the fight against IS with the fight against the Kurds.
As far as NTB is aware, this is precisely where the conflict between the three countries lies – in the classification of terrorist organizations.
(©NTB)
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