by Alberto Galvi –
After four hours of debate, the Turkish Parliament ratified Sweden’s membership in NATO. Deputies approved the accession protocol with 287 votes in favour, 55 against and 4 abstentions. Recdep President Tayyp Erdogan is expected to sign the law in the coming days. Sweden and Finland applied to join NATO in May 2022 following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Finland’s membership nearly doubled the length of NATO’s border with Russia and substantially strengthened the defenses of Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania, which joined the bloc after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Erdogan was one of the few NATO leaders to hold regular meetings and telephone conversations with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Erdogan’s resistance to Sweden’s NATO membership reflects his more nuanced stance towards Moscow, but was mainly due to the fact that the Scandinavian country hosted members of the Kurdish PKK group, considered terrorist by Turkey.