Türkiye, Sweden, Finland to hold trilateral mechanism meeting

ANKARA

Türkiye will hold a trilateral mechanism meeting with Sweden and Finland on March 9 in Brussels to discuss the commitments of the Nordic countries for their bid to join NATO.

Presidential spokesperson Ambassador İbrahim Kalın and newly appointed Deputy Foreign Minister Burak Akçapar will attend the meeting.

Türkiye on Jan. 24 postponed a trilateral mechanism meeting after President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan lashed out at Sweden for allowing the burning of the Quran outside Ankara’s Stockholm Embassy.

The three countries held two rounds of meetings to review the implementation of the trilateral agreement established by the three states, which they signed in late June last year. The Nordic states pledged to support Türkiye’s fight against terrorism and agreed to address Ankara’s pending deportation or extradition requests for “terror” suspects. The mechanism aims to evaluate the implementation of the deal.

Most recently, Ankara signaled that it might consider ratifying Finland’s NATO bid before Sweden on the ground that the latter has not fulfilled its commitments.

“There are commitments made [by these two countries] on their accession to NATO. It is not possible for us to say ‘Yes’ to the Swedish NATO membership before seeing that these commitments are fulfilled,” Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu told reporters at a press conference with visiting Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto in the capital Ankara on Feb. 27.

Finland, which shares a 1,300-kilometer (800-mile) border with Russia, and Sweden, decided jointly to end their decades-long policies of military non-alignment, winning formal support for their plans at a historic NATO summit in June.

On the political front, Türkiye and Hungary are two NATO allies that have not yet ratified the accession protocols of Sweden and Finland, while the remaining 28 members have already fulfilled the procedures.