NATO Summit: Erdogan to Meet with Finnish-Swedish Leaders on Tuesday

LAST UPDATE: 10.56

The leaders of Finland and Sweden are expected to meet with Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday in a bid to persuade him to lift objections to the two countries’ NATO membership, according to Bloomberg.

Finnish President Sauli Niinisto and Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Anderson are expected to meet with Mr Erdogan in Madrid, along with Alliance Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, according to his office. The meetings follow a first round of talks that has taken place at NATO headquarters in Brussels.

Finland and Sweden applied to join NATO in May after Russia launched an attack on Ukraine, to see their application blocked almost immediately by Erdogan’s Turkey, which has called for crackdowns on Kurdish political groups present. in the two northern European countries, mainly in Sweden. The lifting of any embargo on arms sales to Turkey is also a key demand on the part of Erdogan.

Turkey has the potential to veto the accession of the two northern European countries to the Alliance, as the accession of new members to the Alliance requires the approval of the governments and parliaments of all 30 NATO member countries.

So far, Ankara has even frozen the start of talks on the terms of Sweden and Finland’s accession.

The heads of state or government of NATO member states are meeting this week in the Spanish capital to decide on the strategic direction of the alliance. Although all parties insist that the Summit is not necessarily a crossroads in terms of time to resolve the issue that has arisen with Turkey, intense pressure is already being exerted so that the summit does not create a stalemate.

“The longer the situation remains blocked, the more the united front of the alliance will begin to shake,” Iro Sarkka, a NATO expert at the University of Helsinki, said in an interview. “NATO’s active role is essential to resolving the situation so that the parties involved can sit at the same table.”

“We do not know what is going on in the background, but it is a conscious choice to look to the outside world as the three countries that are negotiating and to downplay any US role,” he added. “In the end, however, that is where the solution will most likely come from – that is, from the United States, which will enter into a deal with Turkey to resolve the issue.”