Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan gave his approval on Monday to submit Sweden’s NATO membership application to parliament.
In response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Sweden and Finland applied to join NATO last year, ending their decades-long policy of military neutrality.
While Finland was given the OK to join NATO in April, Sweden is still waiting for approval from Türkiye and Hungary. Stockholm has been trying to join the alliance ahead of Tuesday’s NATO summit in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania.
On the eve of the summit, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg met with Erdogan and Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson for several hours to try to resolve the impasse.
Türkiye claims Sweden isn’t doing enough to crack down on people it views as terrorists, primarily members of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which is banned in Türkiye and is labeled a terrorist group by the EU and the US.
In a joint statement, the two nations said Sweden had reaffirmed its position that it would not provide support to the Kurdish groups and would work to revitalize Türkiye’s EU accession process.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg described the move as “historic” and said he was “glad to announce” that President Erdogan had agreed to forward the accession protocol for Sweden to the grand national assembly as soon as possible and work closely with the assembly to ensure ratification.
Joe Biden, president of the United States, welcomed the announcement and plans to meet with Erdogan in person at the summit.
For months, Washington and its allies have tried to put pressure on Ankara. Some of Türkiye’s NATO allies anticipate that Ankara is using Sweden’s membership to exert pressure on Washington in order to acquire the $20 billion worth of F-16 fighters and nearly 80 modernization kits it requested to purchase in October 2021.
