Turkish parliament ready to vote on Sweden’s NATO membership

(Ankara) The Turkish parliament began examining Sweden’s NATO accession protocol on Tuesday, before a crucial vote expected in the evening, the end of twenty months of negotiations between Ankara and Stockholm.

Turkey is, with Hungary, the last NATO member to still block Sweden’s entry into the Atlantic Alliance, at whose door the Nordic country has been knocking since May 2022.

President Erdogan’s main ally, Devlet Bahçeli, thanks to whom the head of state has an absolute majority in parliament, has assured that his deputies will vote in favor of Swedish membership, auguring a favorable outcome.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban invited his Swedish counterpart to Budapest on Tuesday to try to resolve their differences.

Budapest, which gave its support in principle to Sweden’s entry but has been dragging its feet for months, is calling on Stockholm to stop its policy of “denigration” towards the Hungarian government, accused of authoritarian drift.

The Swedish Foreign Minister responded curtly to the invitation, saying that his country had “no reason” to currently negotiate with Hungary.

To satisfy Ankara’s demands, Sweden, on the other hand, reformed its Constitution and adopted a new anti-terrorism law, with Turkey accusing Sweden of leniency towards Kurdish militants who had taken refuge on its soil, some of whom were considered terrorists by Ankara.

Sweden’s candidacy was thus approved at the end of December by the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Turkish Parliament, a first step welcomed by Stockholm.

F-16

Sweden had submitted its application in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, at the same time as Finland, admitted last April, the two countries breaking with decades of neutrality forced by Moscow after the Second World War. , then military non-alignment since the end of the Cold War.

Adding to this thorny issue, Mr. Erdogan added at the beginning of December as a condition for Ankara’s ratification the “simultaneous” approval by the American Congress of the sale of F-16 fighter planes to Turkey.

The American government is not hostile to this sale but Congress has blocked it until now due in particular to the recurring tensions between Turkey and Greece, also a member of NATO, although relations between these two countries are have warmed up in recent months.

Mr Erdogan spoke by telephone last month with US President Joe Biden, who argued that Turkey could obtain the required approval from Congress if Sweden ratifies NATO membership.

During a meeting with Mr. Erdogan in Istanbul at the beginning of January, the head of American diplomacy Antony Blinken called for “finalizing [le processus] of Sweden’s membership in NATO”, according to Washington.