Pres. Erdoğan sends Sweden’s NATO case to Parliament

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has handed over the Swedish NATO application to Parliament for ratification, the president’s office said Monday. “The Swedish NATO Protocol of Accession was signed by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on October 23, 2023 and handed over to the Turkish Grand National Assembly,” Turkey’s communications directorate wrote on X. It is not clear from the notice when ratification will take place. Only Hungary and Turkey have yet to ratify Sweden’s accession to NATO in their Parliaments.
     Turkey long criticised Sweden for not doing enough to curb the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, PKK, which is on the EU’s terror list. At the NATO summit in Vilnius this summer, however, Erdoğan said ‘yes’ to Sweden now joining. The approval came after Sweden tightened its terrorism legislation. But in the months that followed, while the Turkish Parliament was on its summer recess, Turkey’s approval dragged on.
     Sweden’s Prime Minister, Ulf Kristersson, said he was pleased that the ratification document has been forwarded to Turkey’s Parliament. “Now it is up to Parliament to deal with the issue,” he wrote on X. “We look forward to joining NATO,” Kristersson continued. According to the TT news agency, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg is said to have appointed a foreign ministers’ meeting in November as a time when he expects Sweden to be a member. /ritzau/