NATO's Stoltenberg heads to Türkiye to "persuade" Erdogan on Sweden, Finland accession

Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said he would persuade Turkish President Tayyip Erdoğan to greenlight the NATO accession applications of Sweden and Finland, the NATO chief announced at a press conference on October 26.

To convince Erdogan, Stoltenberg said he would soon travel to Türkiye, Euractiv informs.

“Finland and Sweden are in close contact with Türkiye, and I will go to Ankara or Istanbul to meet with the Turkish president myself in the near future,” he said, without giving further details.

So far, Türkiye and Hungary are the only NATO countries that have not yet ratified the applications. While Ankara has made a number of demands that it says must be fulfilled, Budapest has not given an explanation for the delay and has assured it will happen.

On 20 October, Sweden’s new Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson announced that he planned to travel to Türkiye to continue negotiations with his Turkish counterpart.

“We don’t have a date yet, but it will happen very soon,” Kristersson told television broadcaster SVT.

The announcement was positively received by Erdogan who told Daily Sabah that “Sweden’s new prime minister has requested a meeting and I have asked our friends to arrange a meeting. We will discuss these issues with him in our country.”

However, the Turkish president warned that the Turkish parliament would not ratify the membership of the two Nordic states until Ankara’s extradition requests were met.

Last summer, Sweden agreed with Turkey on a deal that would let the country into the military alliance, after Erdogan demanded several times that Sweden hand over up to 70 people and resume selling weapons to his country.

One of Turkey’s demands is that a “structured cooperation mechanism for sharing intelligence in the fight against terrorism and organised crime” be established between the countries.

“The countries will establish a joint, structured dialogue and cooperation mechanism at all levels of government, including between law enforcement and intelligence agencies,” the agreement reads.