Turkish parliament ratifies Sweden’s membership in NATO

The Swedish Prime Minister welcomes “one more step” towards his country’s membership in NATO. Hungary now remains the only holdout, but the Hungarian Prime Minister invited his Swedish counterpart to Budapest on Tuesday to try to remove the last obstacles.

This marks the end of twenty months of negotiations. On Tuesday January 23, the Turkish parliament ratified Sweden’s membership of NATO. The Swedish candidacy, which now only requires the green light from Hungary, was approved by Turkish MPs with 287 votes for and 55 against. Sweden, on the verge of becoming the 32nd member country of the Atlantic Alliance, announced its candidacy in May 2022, at the same time as Finland, admitted in April 2023.

Sweden did “one step closer” towards NATO membership after the green light from the Turkish parliament, Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said on Tuesday. “Today we took another step towards full membership of NATO”he said in a message on X (ex-twitter), judging “positive” the agreement given by the Turkish parliament to this accession.

In the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the two neighboring countries broke with decades of neutrality after World War II, then military non-alignment since the end of the Cold War. To satisfy Ankara’s demands, Sweden went so far as to reform its Constitution and adopt a new anti-terrorism law, with Turkey accusing the Nordic country of leniency towards Kurdish militants who had taken refuge on its soil, some of whom were considered terrorists by Ankara. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan added approval in early December as a condition for ratification “simultaneous” by the American Congress of the sale of F-16 fighter planes to Turkey, further delaying the green light from its parliament.

Hungary, the last country resistant to this accession

The last act before Sweden’s entry into NATO will now take place in Hungary. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban invited his Swedish counterpart to Budapest on Tuesday to try to remove the last obstacles to a green light from his parliament. “Today I sent a letter to Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson inviting him to Hungary to discuss Sweden’s entry into the Atlantic Alliance”he wrote on X.

The response came a few hours later. “I see no reason to negotiate as of today,” reacted to the press, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Sweden. On the other hand, he said he was ready to “discussions”, relevant “the many points in common” And “military cooperation” between the two countries.