{"id":10094,"date":"2022-06-21T18:33:13","date_gmt":"2022-06-21T16:33:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/?p=10094"},"modified":"2022-06-21T18:33:14","modified_gmt":"2022-06-21T16:33:14","slug":"turkey-sweden-finland-discuss-nato-membership-issue-of-nordic-nations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/turkey-sweden-finland-discuss-nato-membership-issue-of-nordic-nations\/","title":{"rendered":"Turkey, Sweden, Finland discuss NATO membership issue of Nordic nations"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

NATO convened talks between Sweden, Finland, and Turkey to address Ankara\u2019s opposition to the two Nordic countries joining the military alliance and discuss ways to make progress on the NATO membership applications by Finland and Sweden.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The trilateral negotiation talks were held at the NATO headquarters in Brussels on June 21. The meeting was chaired by the Director of the NATO Secretary General\u2019s Private Office, Stian Jenssen. The Turkish delegation was led by Presidential Spokesperson and Special Advisor to the President, Ambassador \u0130brahim Kal\u0131n; the Finnish delegation was led by the Director of Foreign and Security Policy Petri Hakkarainen; and the Swedish delegation was led by State Secretary for Foreign Affairs and the Security Policy Council, Oscar Stenstr\u00f6m.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the post-meeting press briefing, NATO Chief Jens Stoltenberg described the talks as \u2018constructive\u2019 and that the negotiation would continue in the coming days. The alliance is attempting and urging all parties to resolve the standoff prior the next week\u2019s NATO leader\u2019s summit in Madrid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said, “I welcome the constructive meeting held today on the historic applications by Finland and Sweden to join NATO.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Finland and Sweden\u2019s accession to NATO would make the Alliance stronger and the whole Euro-Atlantic area more secure. T\u00fcrkiye has legitimate security concerns over terrorism that we need to address. So we will continue our talks on Finland and Sweden’s applications for NATO membership, and I look forward to finding a way forward as soon as possible,” Stoltenberg added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While speaking on the matter, Turkish presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin said that \u201cThe Madrid NATO summit is not a deadline, so our negotiations will continue.\u201d He further added that \u201cthe existence of terrorist organizations must end in those countries. That is what we expect both from Finland and Sweden.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to some media reports, Turkey had previously declined NATO\u2019s invitation to host the trilateral talks, hence the talks were held at NATO\u2019s headquarters in Brussels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Sweden and Finland gave up their neutral stance and applied to join the NATO alliance last month. The two countries need unanimous approval from all 30 NATO member states before they can join the alliance. Turkey has blocked the progress on accession talks by labeling the two Nordic states \u201cterrorist incubators\u201d, while specifically targeting Sweden as it failed to crack down the Kurdistan Worker\u2019s Party (PKK), an armed militia that has fought with the Turkish state since the 1980s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has openly expressed on several occasions that Turkey is \u201cnot in favor\u201d of letting the two Nordic states into the NATO alliance. He compared their application to the time when NATO added, Turkey\u2019s regional rival, Greece into the alliance. The Turkish president pointed out that NATO\u2019s decision to accept Greece as a member in 1952 was a \u201cmistake\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Erdogan added that \u201cBecause in the past, previous Turkish governments made a mistake about Greece\u2019s membership, and you know Greece\u2019s current attitude against Turkey.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu held talks with Finnish Foreign Minister Pekka Haavesto and Swedish Foreign Minister Ann Linde in Berlin, Germany, on May 14, 2022. (Image Credit: Twitter\/@AnnLinde)<\/sup><\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Turkey holds a significant say in NATO\u2019s decision-making as it is one of the older members of the alliance with a significantly large share of troops. Turkey joined the NATO alliance in 1952 and holds the second-largest military after the United States in the 30-member alliance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although the Turkish administration has not directly claimed that they would block any attempts by Finland and Sweden to join NATO, Turkey\u2019s disapproval could pose a serious problem for Sweden and Finland, especially at a time when other NATO member states want to approve their application as soon as possible.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NATO convened talks between Sweden, Finland, and Turkey in order to address Ankara\u2019s opposition to the two Nordic countries joining the military alliance<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10095,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[62,44,1],"tags":[265,24,357,239,356,59,89,20,113,213,11,82,540,22],"class_list":["post-10094","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-europe","category-middle-east","category-news","tag-belgium","tag-eu","tag-europe","tag-finland","tag-middle-east","tag-nato","tag-pkk","tag-russia","tag-security","tag-sweden","tag-terrorism","tag-turkey","tag-turkiye","tag-ukraine"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/NATO-Turkey-Sweden-Finland-meeting.jpg?fit=690%2C370&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7jJWb-2CO","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10094","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10094"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10094\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10096,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10094\/revisions\/10096"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10095"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}