Finland ‘should consider joining NATO without Sweden’

THE Finland should consider choosing a membership in NATO without her Swedenthe Finnish foreign minister underlined on Tuesday (24/1) for the first time in his statements on his country’s public television after Turkish President Erdogan ruled out Ankara giving the green light to the Swedish candidacy.

At the same time, in another telephone interview with Reuters, he said that Finland and Sweden have repeatedly stated that they plan to join NATO at the same time and this has not changed, underlining the advantages of joint membership with the neighboring country.

“I don’t see the reason to discuss it,” he said when asked if Finland might go ahead with membership without Sweden.

But in comments he made on Yle public television, according to Agence France-Presse, Pekka Haavisto said that a joint membership of the two Nordic countries remains “the first option”, but “obviously we will have to assess the situation, if something has happened that in the long run it makes Sweden no longer able to move forward’ and judged that it is ‘too early to take a position’.

The head of Finnish diplomacy has ruled that a break is needed in the talks between the two Nordic countries and Turkey regarding their accession plans.

Yesterday Monday (23/1) the Turkish president said that Sweden should not expect his country’s support for its NATO membership following a demonstration held near the Turkish embassy in Stockholm over the weekend during which a copy of the Koran.

These demonstrations constitute an “obstacle” to NATO membership applications and the “demonstrators are playing with the security of Finland and Sweden. My own conclusion is that there will be a delay (for the Turkish green light), which will certainly last until the Turkish elections in mid-May,” he concluded.

“We need a break before we go back to the trilateral talks and see where we are and things calm down after the current situation, so no conclusions should be drawn yet,” Haavisto told Reuters in a telephone interview.

“I think there will be a break for a couple of weeks,” he estimated as reported by the Athens News Agency.

Haavisto said he had talks with his Turkish counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu yesterday, Monday.

“They are clearly feeling the pressure from the upcoming elections in mid-May and because of this the dialogue has understandably become intense in many ways in Turkey,” he added.

Sweden and Finland applied last year to join NATO after Russia invaded Ukraine.

They need the agreement of all NATO members to proceed with their request.

But one NATO member, Turkey, has said that Sweden in particular should take a clear stand against what Ankara considers terrorists – mainly Kurdish fighters and a group it blames for a 2016 coup attempt in Turkey.

Unlike in the case of Sweden, Turkey has made it clear in recent months that it would have no significant objection to Finland’s entry.