Turkey lifted its veto on Sweden and Finland's candidacy to join NATO on Tuesday in Madrid.
After weeks of negotiations, with Ankara maintaining the blockade against the Nordic countries, contacts have intensified in recent hours to settle the situation at the Madrid summit.
Turkey's decision has come after a meeting of the top leaders of the three countries, with the presence of the Secretary General of the Alliance, Jens Stoltenberg, in the Spanish capital.
"We have reached an agreement that paves the way for Sweden and Finland to join NATO," confirmed Stoltenberg in an appearance immediately after the signing of a memorandum between the allied country and the two applicants, who have publicly signed the foreign ministers of the three states.
The signed document "addresses Turkey's concerns, including those related to the export of weapons and the fight against terrorism", added the secretary general of the Alliance, referring to the two main reluctance of Ankara to give its approval to the accession of Stockholm and Helsinki.
“Soon we will be 32 [allied countries]”, he assured.
The decision, which sends a powerful political signal to Russia four months after invading Ukraine, paves the way for NATO's ninth enlargement.
This very Wednesday, according to Stoltenberg, the allies will take the decision to formally invite Sweden and Finland to become members.
Finally, the decision on their access will have to be approved in all the allied capitals.
“I am sure”, he underlined, “that the accession of Sweden and Finland to our alliance is something that will happen”.
The road ahead, in any case, may still be long and not without its bumps.
The lifting of the Turkish veto is "only at the invitation" that NATO will make to Sweden and Finland, according to a source from the Turkish delegation to this newspaper.
In this way, these countries will achieve candidate status, but Turkey reserves the right to veto the final entry of Finland and Sweden in case they do not meet the requirements made by Ankara and included in the memorandum.
The meeting between the three leaders concerned began this Tuesday in Madrid with serious faces from all the delegations and lasted for more than two hours.
The unblocking has arrived late in the afternoon.
"As a result of that meeting, our foreign ministers have signed a trilateral memorandum confirming that Turkey will support the invitation of Finland and Sweden to become NATO members at this week's Madrid Summit," he announced in a statement. the Finnish president, Sauli Niinistö, after signing the document.
"The concrete steps of our accession to NATO will be agreed by the Allies during the next two days, but that decision is already imminent", he detailed.
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US President Joe Biden celebrated the agreement in a tweet: “Congratulations to Finland, Sweden and Turkey for signing a trilateral memorandum, a crucial step towards a NATO invitation to Finland and Sweden, which will strengthen our Alliance and it will strengthen our collective security, and a great way to start the Summit.”
The signed document states that "Finland and Sweden will not provide support to [the Kurdish militias] YPG / PYD [their political arm], and the organization described as FETÖ in Turkey [referring to the political-religious organization of the Islamist preacher Fethullah Gülen, former ally of Erdogan turned adversary and whose members were allegedly involved in the 2016 coup attempt]”, according to the document, to which EL PAÍS has had access.
In the text, the two candidate countries also "confirm that the PKK [Kurdistan Workers' Party] is a proscribed terrorist organization" and both undertake to "prevent their activities", it adds in reference to the Kurdish armed group that since 1984 has maintained the armed struggle against the Turkish state demanding more rights and autonomy for the Kurdish population of Turkey.
More than 45,000 people, mostly Kurds, have died in the conflict.
Stoltenberg has added in his appearance that Finland and Sweden are "willing to work with Turkey in the pending deportations or in the extradition of individuals suspected of terrorism", but with the guarantee that this process is carried out "in accordance with the Convention European Court of Extradition” and with respect “to the rule of law”.
The parties have hurried up the time being aware that the message of an agreement that would open the door to Stockholm and Helsinki would be powerful: two countries with irreproachable democratic credentials abandon their traditional neutrality to enter the military organization, which will once again point to Russia as its main threat, as it did during the Cold War with the USSR.
Even then, Sweden and Finland did not abandon that status and, now, moved by the fears that the Russian invasion of Ukraine has unleashed, they have taken a step that can be described as historic.
“We hope to move forward with the accession of Sweden and Finland”, declared Stoltenberg in Madrid in the morning, before the start of the meeting, and with a certain optimistic tone.
This spirit has been maintained in the afternoon in view of the fact that the meeting was prolonged and that a memorandum has finally been signed.
"Each country has the right to choose its own path," Stoltenberg stressed, when asked about the main message that Tuesday's decision sends to Moscow.
After the two Scandinavian countries applied to join the alliance, Turkey blocked both candidates.
The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, accused them, especially Sweden, of not being sensitive to his demands on the Kurdish organizations he accuses of terrorism and for the restrictions on the sale of weapons that Stockholm and Helsinki imposed in 2019 on Ankara.
It also bothers him that the followers of the cleric Fethullah Gülen, whom he accuses of being behind the failed coup of 2013, are not being extradited. And before leaving for Madrid, he made it clear that he was going to put a price on it, saying that he would not settle for “empty words”, who wanted “concrete” measures.
"Integration into NATO implies responsibilities," he noted.
These words came hours after Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson said in Brussels at NATO headquarters on Monday that her country considers the PKK a terrorist organization, just as the European Union does.
Anderson also highlighted a conversation with Erdogan last Saturday, calling it "constructive."
The meeting between her, Erdogan, Stoltenberg and the president of Finland seemed this Tuesday as the last opportunity to unclog the situation at the summit itself and launch that "powerful message", as a NATO diplomat defined it a couple of weeks ago .
Kiireinen päivä Madridissa alkoi kolmella mediatapaamisella.
Seuraavaksi edessä tapaaminen Turkin presidentti Erdoğanin, Ruotsin pääministeri Anderssonin ja Naton pääsihteeri Stoltenbergin kanssa.
pic.twitter.com/EbeWloZMMZ
– Sauli Niinistö (@niinisto) June 28, 2022
As the meeting was underway, two Finnish newspapers (
Helsingin Sanomat
and
Iltalehti
), quoted by Reuters, said that negotiations were expected to continue as delegations prepared a joint memorandum addressing Turkish concerns about Sweden and Finland's entry into the NATO.
After unblocking the situation, the way has been cleared for these two countries to be granted candidate status.
This can be done very quickly because both meet the required democratic credentials and because they also have military forces with the capacity to act in an integrated manner with those of NATO;
in fact, the practice of exercises with the armies of the Allies is common.
After confirming the candidacy, the ratification process will begin by the 30 allied states in their Parliaments, which will end up giving the organization access to the two Nordic countries.
In the meantime, and to ensure that if there were an aggression they would have the support of the Allies, several countries have already guaranteed Sweden assistance, as Andersson indicated on Monday: “The United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Spain, Norway The US and Denmark have given Sweden clear guarantees of support during the application period.
For that we are very grateful."
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In any case, if the Turkish veto had been maintained, NATO was not going to throw in the towel.
“The [Madrid] summit was never a deadline.
All NATO leaders are present, as well as the leaders of Sweden and Finland.
So this gives us an opportunity that we can't miss to see how much progress we can make," Stoltenberg explained Monday.
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The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez.
Video: REUTERS
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