Turkiye postpones NATO talks with Sweden, Finland – Tidning
ISTANBUL: Turkiye on Tuesday postponed NATO accession talks with Sweden and Finland, further denting the Nordic neighbors’ hopes of joining the Western defense alliance after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
A Turkish diplomatic source said the tripartite meeting has been pushed back from February to a “later date”, without giving further details.
The decision further reduced the two countries’ chances of joining NATO ahead of Turkey’s presidential and parliamentary elections in May.
Finland, which shares a 1,300-kilometer border with Russia, and Sweden jointly decided to end their decades-long policy of military non-alignment, gaining formal support for their plans at a historic NATO summit in June.
The two countries’ bids were then quickly ratified by 28 of NATO’s 30 member states, underscoring the urgency of the issues in the face of Russia’s aggression. Bids to join NATO must be ratified by all members of the alliance, of which Turkiye is a member.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has promised that his parliament would approve the two bids next month. But Erdogan has dug in his heels heading into a close presidential election as he seeks to energize his nationalist base.
Erdogan’s resistance prompted Finland on Tuesday to hint for the first time that it might try to join on its own because of Stockholm’s diplomatic problems with Ankara.
– We have to assess the situation, if something has happened that in the longer term would prevent Sweden from moving forward, says Finnish Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto to Yle.
Permanently blocked
Swedish Foreign Minister Tobias Billström said he was “in contact with Finland to find out what this really means”.
Haavisto later clarified his comments, saying he did not want to “speculate” that Finland would join alone “as both countries seem to be making progress”, and stressed his commitment to a joint application.
But “of course, somewhere in the back of our minds, we think about different worlds where some countries would be permanently excluded from membership,” he said.
Mr Haavisto said the anti-Turkiye protests had “obviously slowed down the progress” of Finland’s and Sweden’s applications.
“My own assessment is that there will be a delay, which will certainly last until the Turkish elections in mid-May,” Haavisto said.
‘Plan B’ in the open
Turkiye has stated that it has no major objections to Finland’s entry into NATO.
Helsinki had so far refused to speculate on the possibility of joining without Sweden, stressing the benefits of joint membership with its neighbour.
But “frustration has grown in different corners of Helsinki”, and “for the first time it was said out loud that there are other possibilities”, said Matti Pesu, a researcher at the International Institute of Finland.
“There has been a change” in the Finnish position, he said. “These plan B’s are said out loud.” Mr Pesu noted that while Turkiye has so far given no indication that it would treat the two applications “separately”, it will be “interesting to see how Turkiye reacts” to Haavisto’s comments.
Published in Dawn, January 25, 2023