World News | NATO Chief Heads to Ankara as Turkiye Holds Up Nordics

Brussels, Feb 15 (AP) NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg conceded Wednesday that Turkiye has blocked efforts to let Finland and Sweden join the world's biggest security alliance at the same time, and said he is heading to Ankara to discuss the issue with the Turkish president and foreign minister.

Finland and neighbouring Sweden abandoned decades of nonalignment and applied to join the 30-nation alliance in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine a year ago.

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All NATO members except Turkey and Hungary have ratified their accession, but unanimity is required.

Stoltenberg and most allies have long insisted that the Nordic neighbours should join at the same time.

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But Turkiye has accused the government in Stockholm of being too lenient toward groups it deems as terror organisations or existential threats, including Kurdish groups.

Earlier this month, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Ankara has fewer problems with Finland joining.

“There are different assessments in Turkey about to what extent Finland and Sweden are in the same position to be ratified, and that is a Turkish decision,” Stoltenberg told reporters, after chairing a meeting of NATO defence ministers.

“That's not a NATO decision. It's a decision by Turkiye,” he said, while underlining his belief that both countries have fulfilled their commitments to NATO and Turkiye and should be allowed to join.

Stoltenberg added that “the sequencing is not the most important thing. The most important thing is that both Finland and Sweden soon become members of the alliance,” breaking with a stance he has voiced for many months that it was important that they join together.

But the former Norwegian prime minister did not criticise Turkiye.

The country was rocked last week by a devastating earthquake and aftershocks that killed more than 39,000 people there and in neighbouring Syria.

Turkiye is also in an election year, and the topic of Nordic membership of NATO is a possible vote winner.

In recent weeks, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has expressed anger at a series of separate demonstrations in Stockholm.

In one case a solitary anti-Islam activist burned the Quran outside the Turkish Embassy, while in an unconnected protest an effigy of Erdogan was hanged.

Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson has said it would be “unfortunate” if Finland entered NATO first.

Stoltenberg was due to fly to Ankara later Wednesday and meet Erdogan and Cavusoglu.

U.S. Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin declined to take a stand, but he said that NATO has trained with both candidate countries and praised them for investing in modern military equipment.

“They are ready to join now, and these are two countries that are highly capable, that bring a lot of value to the alliance once they join,” Austin told reporters.

Of the two countries, only Finland shares a border with Russia and would appear to be more at risk should Russian President Vladimir Putin decide to target his neighbour.

That said, some NATO allies, led by the United States, have offered security guarantees to both should they come under threat.

Hungary has pushed back its ratification date for both countries three times so far but has not publicly raised any substantial objections to either of them joining. (AP)

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)