Stoltenberg sure that Sweden, Finland will join NATO despite obstacles
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg believes Finland and Sweden will soon join the alliance with Turkey’s approval, days after Stockholm said it had done all it could to satisfy Ankara’s reservations about its membership.
“I am convinced that the accession process will be completed for Sweden and Finland and that all NATO allies will ratify the accession protocols in their parliaments. It also applies to Türkiye,” Stoltenberg told reporters on Tuesday after signing a joint declaration on expanding cooperation at the alliance’s headquarters alongside European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Charles Michel.
He said the membership process generally takes years but all 30 members invited Finland and Sweden to join and sign their accession protocols in July. Since then, 28 countries, apart from Türkiye and Hungary, have approved the measure through their national procedures.
“This has been the fastest accession process so far in NATO’s modern history,” Stoltenberg stressed.
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.
Stockholm extradited three people, including a terrorist PKK member, to Türkiye in early December. Ankara welcomed the development but said it was “not enough” for its approval. As of the new year, Sweden also entered into force one new amendment to their constitution that allows the government to “combat terrorism by new and more extensive means.”
However, Sweden’s Supreme Court last month refused to extradite a prominent Gülenist Terror Group (FETÖ) suspect, Bülent Keneş, in a move that displeased Ankara. Commenting on the matter, Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu said the country was not even “halfway” in meeting the commitments it made to secure their support.
On the contrary, Sweden’s Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson claimed that his country had lived up to its commitments and that the decision now “lies with Türkiye”.
“Türkiye has confirmed that we have done what we said we would do, but they also say they want concessions that we can’t make, the ones we don’t want to make,” Kristersson said. “We are confident that Türkiye will make a decision. We just don’t know when,” he said, adding that the decision depends on Ankara’s internal politics as well as “Sweden’s ability to be serious.”
Türkiye has yet to publicly react to his statements.
Alarmed by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the two Nordic nations discarded their long-standing policy of military non-alignment and applied to join NATO in May, but the process has been held up by Turkish government objections to their accession on security grounds.
A month later in June, the sides signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) at a NATO summit in Madrid that stipulated that the two countries take concrete steps to address said concerns, increase their crackdown on terrorist organizations such as the PKK and FETÖ, and extradite suspects for terrorism-related crimes.
Türkiye has provided a list of wanted persons to Sweden and expects the Scandinavian nation to take swift action to show that its demands are being met.
On the other hand, Sweden announced in September that it is removing an arms embargo it imposed on Ankara in 2019 following Turkey’s anti-terrorist operation in Syria.