Türkiye says NATO summit ’not the deadline’ for Finland, Sweden talks

BRUSSELS

The negotiations on Finland’s and Sweden’s NATO membership bids will continue, and the forthcoming summit in Madrid is not an endpoint, Presidential Spokesperson İbrahim Kalın said on June 20.

“As we have said before, the NATO summit is not an endpoint for us, so those negotiations will continue. That’s what we told our interlocutors from Finland and Sweden,” Kalın told reporters at a press conference held after the Turkish delegation’s meetings in Brussels.

Kalın and deputy Foreign Minister Sedat Önal held extensive talks with the Swedish and Finnish counterparts under the auspices of NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg at the alliance’s headquarters in Brussels on June 20.

The comments from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s top foreign policy adviser followed a round of urgent talks in Brussels that NATO leaders had hoped would pave the way for the Nordic states’ formal approval to join the bloc at the Madrid summit. Erdoğan’s foreign policy chief Kalın reported no breakthrough at the Brussels talks.

He stated that there was an open and sincere meeting environment in general and that such negotiations will continue. “We conveyed Türkiye’s demands, the future depends on the concrete steps to be taken by the other parties,” the spokesperson said.

Ankara says Finland and Sweden are providing a safe haven for the PKK terror organization and its Syrian offshoot, the YPG. Ankara has also demanded the two countries lift their weapons freezes on Türkiye.

Expressing that they expect Sweden to take urgent steps regarding the PKK’s activities, Kalın said that they have heard positive rhetoric from the Swedish authorities in this direction, that a new anti-terrorism law will come into effect as of July 1, but what exactly happens will need to be seen in the future.

Önal, for his part, informed that Türkiye’s expectations were two-fold. “We surely want abiding commitments from Sweden and Finland, and secondly we want to see solid implementations regarding the anti-terror fight,” he stated.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said Türkiye’s legitimate security concerns over terrorism need to be addressed, adding: “We will continue our talks on Finland’s and Sweden’s applications for NATO membership, and I look forward to finding a way forward as soon as possible.”

“Finland’s and Sweden’s accession to NATO would make the Alliance stronger and the whole Euro-Atlantic area more secure,” he said.

The NATO leaders’ summit will be held on June 29-30 in Madrid. NATO chief Stoltenberg and other prominent leaders want the approval of Sweden’s and Finland’s bids to join the alliance during the summit. However, Stoltenberg had admitted that the summit may not be the endpoint of the process.

The NATO leaders will also discuss the Strategic Concept 2030, a document that outlines the security challenges of the alliance in the upcoming decade in the context of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.