The head of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, said he was "totally serene" on Tuesday, May 30 about Sweden's membership of the Atlantic Alliance, the day after the re-election of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan who has so far blocked this candidacy.
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I am totally serene about the fact that Sweden will become a full member of NATO," Stoltenberg said at a roundtable in Oslo, which hosts an informal meeting of NATO foreign ministers on Wednesday and Thursday.
'As soon as possible'
Turkey is, with Hungary, the only one of the 31 NATO countries not yet to have ratified Swedish membership, while Finland formally became the 31st member of the Alliance on 4th April. Re-elected Sunday for five years, Jens Stoltenberg speaks at the meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Gamle Logen, Oslo, May 30, 2023. Erdogan is blocking the candidacy, accusing Stockholm of harboring Turkish opposition figures with alleged links to banned Kurdish activists.
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We will have close contacts with Ankara, with President Erdogan to help ensure that this process goes as quickly as possible," Jens Stoltenberg told reporters after the roundtable. "They have already come extremely far since all member countries, including Turkey, invited them to become full members at the summit" in Madrid last year, he added. "I have considered since last autumn that Sweden should have already been admitted by ratification and I still share this opinion. But when 31 countries have to agree, it probably takes a little longer than I would like and so we are working on it," he said. If the head of Turkish diplomacy will not be present in Oslo this week, the question of the Swedish candidacy will probably be raised again on 11 and 12 July at the Vilnius summit, which the meeting in the Norwegian capital is supposed to prepare.
