NATO chief convenes talks in a bid to persuade Turkey to let Sweden join the military alliance

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This article was published 28/06/2023 (1193 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

BRUSSELS (AP) — NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Wednesday he has called a meeting of senior officials from Turkey, Sweden and Finland for July 6 to try to overcome Turkish objections to Sweden joining the military alliance.

The meeting is a last-ditch effort by Stoltenberg to deal with one of the final obstacles to Sweden’s membership before a major summit the following week. Sweden’s membership would be a highly symbolic moment and another indication of how Russia’s war in Ukraine is driving countries to join the Western alliance.

However, Hungary also has not yet ratified Sweden’s bid, and Hungarian lawmakers said a long-delayed parliamentary vote on ratifying Sweden’s NATO membership would not would not happen until the autumn legislative session. NATO requires the unanimous approval of all members to expand, so that almost certainly means the country will not get the green light in time for the July 11-12 summit in the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius.

“The time is now to welcome Sweden as a full member of NATO,” Stoltenberg told reporters. Foreign ministers, intelligence chiefs and security advisers from Turkey, Sweden and Finland will be taking part in the talks in Brussels.

Sweden applied to join NATO last year after Russia invaded Ukraine amid widespread concern in Europe that President Vladimir Putin might broaden the war. It applied alongside Finland and they had hoped to join together, but Turkish objections to Sweden’s membership meant that Finland eventually joined on its own in April.

Stockholm has changed its anti-terror laws and lifted an arms embargo on Turkey to satisfy Ankara’s demands. But Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in a statement posted on his social media account that he spoke with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz earlier Wednesday by phone and again raised his concerns over Sweden’s NATO membership.

“President Erdogan stated that while taking steps in the right direction, especially the change in Sweden’s anti-terror legislation, supporters of the PKK/PYD/YPG in Sweden continue to freely organize demonstrations praising terrorism, recruiting people and providing financial resources to terrorist organizations, and that this situation is unacceptable for Turkey.”

The Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, has waged a 38-year insurgency against Turkey that has left tens of thousands dead. It is designated a terrorist organization by the U.S and the European Union.

Turkey’s government accuses Sweden of being too lenient toward groups that Ankara says pose a security threat, including militant Kurdish groups and people associated with a 2016 coup attempt.

Sweden has a Kurdish diaspora of around 100,000 people.

Demonstrations by pro-Kurdish and anti-NATO groups in Sweden have frustrated Stockholm’s efforts to show it is taking Turkey’s security concerns seriously. Other protests by individual anti-Islam activists have complicated things further.

On Wednesday a man who identified himself in Swedish media as a refugee from Iraq burned a Quran outside a mosque in central Stockholm. Police authorized the protest, citing freedom of speech, after a previous decision to ban a similar protest was overturned by a Swedish court.

Turkish officials condemned the Quran-burning on the first day of the Eid al-Adha holiday.

“Defending hate crimes under the guise of freedom of expression is a violation of the rights of those who are the victims of these crimes and a real blow to freedom of expression,” Vice President Cevdet Yilmaz said in a social media post.

Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said it was “unacceptable to allow these anti-Islamic actions under the pretext of freedom of expression. To turn a blind eye to such atrocious acts is to be complicit.”

Hungary has never clearly stated publicly what its concerns are about Sweden’s possible membership.

In a Facebook post, Agnes Vadai, a lawmaker with Hungary’s opposition Democratic Coalition party, wrote that Prime Minister Viktor Orban and his governing Fidesz party would not schedule a vote on Sweden’s accession during its final spring session next week.

The postponement is the latest in a long succession of delays that have gone on for a year, with high-ranking Hungarian officials saying they support Sweden’s membership while also making vague demands from Stockholm as a condition for approval.

NATO officials expect that Hungary will approve Sweden’s membership once Turkey lifts its objections.

French President Emmanuel Macron called on Turkey and Hungary to quickly approve the accession.

“It’s now time … to allow Sweden to attend the Vilnius summit as an ally,” Macron said in a joint declaration with Stoltenberg ahead of a working meeting Wednesday in Paris. “Now, more than ever, is the time to make decisions that will ensure the unity and stability of the continent.”

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Associated Press writers Justin Spike in Budapest, Sylvia Corbet in Paris and Robert Badendieck in Istanbul contributed to this report.