Turkey agreed on Tuesday to lift resistance to the accession of Sweden and Finland to NATO, ending a stalemate that clouded the opening of the Madrid summit amid Europe’s worst security crisis in decades, caused by the war in Ukraine.
After urgent top-level talks with the three countries’ leaders, Alliance Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said that “we now have an agreement that paves the way for Finland and Sweden to join NATO”. He called it a “historic decision.”
Among its many shocking consequences, President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has prompted Sweden and Finland to abandon their longstanding non-aligned status and apply to join NATO in defense against an increasingly aggressive and unpredictable Russia that shares a long border with Finland. Under NATO treaties, an attack on any member would be considered an attack on all and would provoke a military response from the entire alliance.
From left to right: NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Finnish President Sauli Niinisto, Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Anderson, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, Finnish Foreign Minister Peka Haasto Sweden Ann Lindeum in which Turkey agrees to the membership of Finland and Sweden in the Defense Alliance in Madrid, Spain on Tuesday, June 28, 2022 Bernat Armangu / AP
NATO is acting by consensus, and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has threatened to block the Scandinavian couple, urging them to change their position on Kurdish rebel groups, which Turkey considers terrorists.
After weeks of diplomacy and hours of talks Tuesday, Finnish President Sauli Niinistö said the three leaders had signed a joint agreement to end the congestion.
Turkey said it had “got what it wanted”, including “full co-operation … in the fight against” rebel groups.
Stoltenberg said the leaders of the 30-member alliance would issue a formal invitation to the two countries to join on Wednesday. The decision must be ratified by all individual nations, but he said he was “absolutely confident” that Finland and Sweden would become members, something that could happen in months.
Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Anderson said the agreement was “good for Finland and Sweden. And good for NATO”.
She said “the end of the membership process must be done” the sooner the better “.
“But there are 30 parliaments that have to approve this, and you never know,” Anderson told the Associated Press.
Turkey hailed Tuesday’s agreement as a triumph, saying Scandinavian nations have agreed to break up groups Ankara sees as a threat to national security, including the Kurdish Workers’ Party or the PKK and its Syrian expansion. It also said they had agreed “not to impose restrictions on the embargo on the defense industry” in Turkey and to take “concrete steps to extradite terrorist criminals”.
Turkey has called on Finland and Sweden to extradite wanted individuals and lift arms restrictions imposed after Turkey’s 2019 military invasion of northeastern Syria.
Turkey, for its part, has agreed to “support the invitation to Finland and Sweden to join NATO at the Madrid summit in 2022.”
The details of what exactly was agreed were unclear. Amine Kakabave, an independent Swedish MP of Kurdish descent on whose support the government depends for a majority in parliament, said it was “worrying that Sweden is not revealing what promises it has made to Erdogan”.
Anderson dismissed speculation that Sweden and Finland had allowed too much.
Asked if the Swedish public would see the agreement as a concession on issues such as the extradition of Kurdish fighters considered by Ankara to be terrorists, Anderson said he would “see that this is good for Sweden’s security”.
US President Joe Biden congratulated the three nations on taking an “important step”.
Amid speculation about the US role in ending the stalemate, a senior administration official said Washington had not offered any concessions to Turkey to persuade it to accept the deal. But the official said the United States had played a crucial role in helping bring the two countries closer together, and Biden spoke with Erdogan on Tuesday morning at the behest of Sweden and Finland to help boost talks.
The agreement was reached at the opening of a crucial summit, dominated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which will set the alliance’s course for the coming years. The summit began with a dinner of leaders hosted by King Felipe VI of Spain at the 18th-century Royal Palace in Madrid.
At the top of the agenda of the meetings on Wednesday and Thursday is the strengthening of defense against Russia and the support of Ukraine.
Moscow’s invasion on February 24 shook European security and returned city shelling and bloody ground battles to the continent. NATO, which has begun to turn its attention to terrorism and other non-state threats, has had to face hostile Russia again.
Biden said NATO was “as united and galvanized as I think we once were.”
A Russian missile strike Monday on a shopping mall in the central Ukrainian city of Kremenchuk was a grim reminder of the horrors of war. Some saw the time when the leaders of the Group of Seven met in Germany and just before the NATO reunion, as a message from Moscow.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who is due to address NATO leaders via video on Wednesday, called the attack on the shopping center a “terrorist” act.
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko is traveling to Madrid to call on the alliance to provide his country with “what it needs” to end the war.
“Wake up, boys. This is happening now. You will be next, this will knock on your door in the blink of an eye,” Klitschko told reporters at the venue.
Stoltenberg said the meeting would outline a plan for the alliance “in a more dangerous and unpredictable world” – and that means “we need to invest more in our defense,” Stoltenberg said. Only nine of NATO’s 30 members meet the organisation’s goal of spending 2% of gross domestic product on defense. Spain, which is hosting the summit, spends only half of that.
Stoltenberg said on Monday that NATO allies would agree at the summit to increase the force of the alliance’s rapid reaction force almost eightfold, from 40,000 to 300,000 troops. The troops will be based in their home nations, but dedicated to specific countries on NATO’s eastern flank, where the alliance plans to stockpile equipment and ammunition.
Below the surface is tension in NATO over how the war will end and what, if any, concessions Ukraine must make to end the fighting.
There are also differences over how difficult it is to take China’s position in NATO’s new strategic concept – its set of priorities and goals once a decade. The latest document, published in 2010, makes no mention of China.
The new concept is expected to set out NATO’s approach to cybersecurity to climate change – and China’s growing economic and military reach, as well as the growing importance and power of the Indo-Pacific region. For the first time, the leaders of Japan, Australia, South Korea and New Zealand attended the meeting as guests.
Some European members are wary of the US firm stance on Beijing and do not want China to be elected as an adversary.
In the Strategic Concept, NATO is ready to declare Russia the number one threat.
Russia’s state space agency Roscosmos marked the opening of the meeting by releasing satellite images and coordinates of the conference hall in Madrid, where it is being held, along with those of the White House, the Pentagon and government headquarters in London, Paris and Berlin.
The agency said NATO was ready to declare Russia an enemy at the summit, adding that it was publishing precise coordinates “just in case”.
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