Sweden hosts 2nd round NATO talks with Türkiye, Finland

ANKARA

The officials from Türkiye, Sweden and Finland are scheduled to come together in Stockholm to review the steps taken by the two Nordic states to fulfill the Turkish demands to join the NATO alliance.

A Turkish delegation led by deputy Foreign Minister Sedat Önal and presidential advisor İbrahim Kalın has been dispatched to Stockholm to discuss the developments concerning Sweden and Finland’s accession process to the alliance.

It is the second meeting of the Permanent Joint Mechanism established by the three states under the trilateral agreement they signed in late June. The agreement paved the way for the two Scandinavian countries to launch the membership process to the alliance on the condition that they intensify anti-terror cooperation with Türkiye and extradite terrorists.

Sweden and Finland have taken some steps to address Türkiye’s concerns but Ankara says more concrete actions are needed for the Turkish Parliament’s ratification of their accession to the alliance. Out of 30 allied nations, only Türkiye and Hungary have not pledged parliamentary approval to Sweden and Finland.

“We are supporting NATO’s open-door policy. We are not against the membership of Sweden and Finland to NATO. But we are waiting for them to fulfill the commitments they pledged on June 28 in Madrid,” Defense Minister Hulusi Akar said on Nov. 22 at the Parliament.

He explained that Ankara is asking them to cut their links and support to the terrorist organizations and remove restrictions on the sale of military equipment to Türkiye. Ankara has long been criticizing both countries for not taking measures against the activities of the terror organizations, namely the PKK, YPG and the FETÖ, on their soils.

Sweden has recently amended its anti-terror law with promises that it will strengthen the hands of the law enforcement against terror organizations. The law will take force on Jan. 1. Ankara acknowledges that there are some positive steps from Sweden and Finland, but it plans to see the implementation of the new law in Sweden in the first quarter of 2023.

Finland and Sweden, however, want to see a more accelerated process for joining NATO. The issue will come to the fore when NATO foreign ministers meet in Bucharest on Nov. 29 and 30 with the participation of the Swedish and Finnish ministers as well.

Çavuşoğlu speaks with Finnish counterpart

In the meantime, Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu exchanged a phone conversation with his Finnish counterpart Pekka Haavisto on Nov. 24. The two ministers discussed the NATO accession process of Sweden and Finland as well as the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine.