NATO’s chief-safe Nordic pair will join despite hiatus
BRUSSELS — NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg expressed confidence on Tuesday that Finland and Sweden will join the military alliance, just days after the government in Stockholm said it had done all it could to satisfy Turkey’s reservations about its membership.
Alarmed by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Sweden and Finland dropped their long-standing policy of military non-alignment and applied to join NATO in May. All 30 member states must agree to admit the two Nordic neighbors into the world’s largest security organization.
Turkey has held up the process. The Turkish government wants Finland and Sweden to crack down on groups they consider to be terrorist organizations and to extradite people suspected of terror-related crimes. Turkey’s foreign minister said last month that Sweden had not addressed his country’s concerns.
“I am convinced that the accession process will be completed and that all NATO allies will ratify the accession protocols in their parliaments. This also applies to Turkey,” Stoltenberg told reporters at the alliance’s headquarters in Brussels.
Stoltenberg said the membership process normally takes years but all 30 members invited Finland and Sweden in July to join and signed their accession protocols. Since then, 28 countries have approved the measure through their national procedures. Only Turkey and Hungary have not done so.
“This has been the fastest accession process to date in NATO’s modern history,” Stoltenberg said.
He also played down the risk of Finland and Sweden coming under attack or pressure to try to join the military alliance, saying the US and other allies have offered the two bilateral “security guarantees” until they are full members.
“It is inconceivable that Finland and Sweden will face any military threat without NATO reacting to it,” Stoltenberg said.
Last month, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Sweden was not even “halfway” in meeting its commitments to Ankara. His remarks came after a Swedish court ruled not to extradite a journalist wanted by Turkish authorities for alleged links to the failed coup there in 2016.
But Sweden’s Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson has said that his country has lived up to its commitments and that the decision now “lies with Turkey”. Turkey has yet to publicly react to his remarks.