The Swedish government said on Tuesday that it expects Turkey to ratify its NATO membership next fallfollowing the agreement reached at the Atlantic Alliance summit in Vilnius last month, despite new reluctance from Istanbul.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan insisted yesterday that Sweden’s entry depends on whether this Nordic country fulfills its commitments and also stops public burnings of the Koranwhich have provoked a diplomatic conflict with several Muslim countries in recent weeks.
“We take it for granted that the ratification will start in October,” declared Swedish Foreign Minister Tobias Billström today, stressing that the Vilnius agreement was not “a gesture for the gallery”, but a “confirmation” of the declaration ” clear” negotiated in the previous days.
Billström also stressed that he did not discuss the issue of burning the Koran with his Turkish colleague, Hakan Fidan, and expressed hope that the approval process in the Turkish Parliament would go quickly.
“What we know about the process last spring with Finland is that it took about thirteen days. We expect something similar to happen with us,” she stated.
Erdogan had urged Sweden yesterday to “assume control of the streets of Stockholm”, in reference to the burning of the holy book of Muslims, before the process could go ahead and indicated that he cannot guarantee the speed of this.
The Russian military intervention in Ukraine in February 2022 caused Finland and Sweden to end two centuries of military non-alignment and request their entry into the Atlantic Allianceapproved at the June 2022 summit in Madrid, after Turkey lifted its veto at the last minute in exchange for certain conditions.
Finland’s membership was approved last spring by Hungary and Turkey, the last two member countries yet to do so, but both have not done the same for Sweden yet.
Budapest has criticized Stockholm’s “hostile” attitude and has pointed out that it is necessary to resolve a “large number of complaints”, while Ankara reproaches this Nordic country for not extraditing people linked to terrorist organizations, especially from the Kurdish sphere.
During the Vilnius summit, both Hungary and Turkey pledged to push the process forward as soon as possible.
goodbye to neutrality
for a country that has not fought a war in two centuries, the decision to join NATO was huge. Sweden refused to take sides during both world wars and throughout the cold war, adopting the neutrality as an essential part of its security policy and even of his National identity.
Although it changed its status to “non-aligned” after joining the European Union in 1995 and gradually increased its cooperation with NATO, Stockholm ruled out applying for membership until last year, with the public opinion firmly against.
As early as November 2021 – three months before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine – the then Defense Minister, Peter Hultqvistpromised that Sweden would never join NATO as long as its center-left Social Democrats were in power.
then the war started. When the Russian tanks crossed the Ukrainian border and the missiles hit kyiv and other cities, public opinion changed both in Finland and Sweden. Even Hultqvist and the Social Democrats backed down, and in May last year Sweden and Finland jointly applied for NATO membership.
(With information from EFE)
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Source-www.infobae.com