The Turkish Parliament yesterday finally gave its support to the incorporation of Sweden into NATO, in this way removing an important obstacle for the entry of the previously non-aligned country into the military alliance. Lawmakers ratified Sweden’s entry protocol by 287 votes in favor, 55 against and four abstentions. The Turkish approval comes about 20 months after Stockholm asked to join NATO after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. New additions to the Atlantic Alliance must be ratified by all its members.
The Turkish parliament’s foreign affairs committee approved the bid last month, with the support of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling AK Party, its nationalist allies the MHP and the main opposition CHP. The nationalists and Islamists of the opposition rejected it.
The delay in getting Turkey’s approval has frustrated some and allowed Turkey to extract some concessions.
Turkey supported Finland’s accession in April last year, but along with Hungary, has made Sweden wait. Ankara had urged Stockholm to toughen its stance on local members of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which the European Union and the United States also consider a terrorist group. In response, Stockholm introduced a new bill that makes it illegal to be a member of a terrorist organization. Sweden, Finland, Canada and the Netherlands also took steps to relax Turkey’s arms export policies. Erdogan linked Sweden’s ratification to US approval of sales of F-16 fighter jets to Turkey. The White House supports the sale, although there is no clear deadline for the US Congress to approve it and Turkey faces some opposition in Congress over the delay in NATO expansion.
Hungary is now the only Alliance member state that has not approved Sweden’s accession. Hungary had promised it would not be the last ally to ratify Sweden’s membership, but its Parliament is in a deadlock until about mid-February. However, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said yesterday, in a message on the X platform, that he wants to personally negotiate Sweden’s accession to NATO. “Today I sent a letter of invitation to the Swedish Prime Minister, Ulf Kristersson, for a visit to Hungary to negotiate Sweden’s accession to NATO,” said Orbán’s text.
While Orbán says his government supports Sweden’s admission to the alliance, he says lawmakers from his ruling Fidesz party are unconvinced by what he called Swedish politicians’ “blatant lies” about the condition of democracy in Hungary. In the letter to his Swedish counterpart, Orbán asks for “a more intense political dialogue” that could contribute to “reinforcing mutual trust”.
Sweden is precisely participating in the military maneuvers that NATO is holding in the Baltic countries, Poland, Germany, Norway and Romania, the largest since 1998. The Steadfast Defender exercises bring together around 90,000 soldiers, 1,100 combat vehicles, more than 80 aircraft and more than 50 ships.
