Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu during a press conference in Ankara on February 22, 2023. ADEM ALTAN / AFP
Negotiations between Turkey, Sweden and Finland with a view to the two Nordic countries joining NATO will resume on March 9, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu announced on Monday February 27.
“The meeting will be held on March 9Mevlut Cavusoglu said at a press conference in Ankara, suggesting that this meeting could take place in Brussels, where the Atlantic Alliance has its headquarters. Turkey put a halt to the negotiations at the end of January by postponing a tripartite meeting, initially scheduled for February, after several anti-Turkish and anti-Islam demonstrations in Stockholm.
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“No satisfactory measure”
On a visit to Ankara in mid-February, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg had called for the integration of “NOWFinland and Sweden, whose candidacies for the Atlantic Alliance have been blocked since last May by Ankara. While acknowledging certain progress in the negotiations, the head of Turkish diplomacy nevertheless estimated on Monday that “no satisfactory action had been taken by Sweden“.
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“Without these advances, it is impossible for us to say yes to Sweden’s membership in NATO.said Mevlut Cavusoglu, who was speaking alongside his Hungarian counterpart Peter Szijjarto. Turkey accuses Sweden, among other things, of harboring Kurdish militants and sympathizers whom it describes as “terrorists», in particular those of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
Thirty member countries
Turkish President Recep Erdogan suggested in early February that the Turkish Parliament could ratify Finland’s membership without Sweden’s jointly filed membership. The leaders of the thirty member countries of NATO took the decision to invite Sweden and Finland to join the Alliance during a summit in Madrid last June. Thirty countries have signed the accession protocols and 28 have ratified them. Only Turkey and Hungary have not yet ratified their agreement, but the Hungarian Parliament must decide at the beginning of March.
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The decision in January of the Swedish authorities to authorize a demonstration in front of the Turkish embassy in Stockholm, during which a Koran was burned, had provoked the ire of Ankara. Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Finland and Sweden submitted a joint bid to join the Atlantic Alliance, abandoning decades of military non-alignment.
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