Stoltenberg: Erdogan Has Agreed to Forward Sweden's NATO Bid to Parliament

After more than a year of political jockeying, Turkiye has agreed to support Sweden's bid to join the NATO alliance, which it applied to join last year.

In a statement on Monday afternoon, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan "has agreed to forward Sweden's accession protocol to the Grand National Assembly ASAP & ensure ratification. This is an historic step which makes all NATO Allies stronger & safer."

Stoltenberg said the decision was the result of a meeting he orchestrated between Erdogan and Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson ahead of the NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, that is set to begin on Tuesday.

Stoltenberg's office said Monday's agreements built on the trilateral memorandum signed last year in Madrid and noted Sweden's moves to abide by that agreement, including amending its constitution, ending its support for the Kurdish YPG and PKK militant groups, and cooperating with Ankara on counter-terrorism efforts. Turkiye and Sweden also agreed to drop all remaining economic barriers between them and work to step up trade and investment cooperation.

In a Monday statement, the White House said US President Joe Biden "welcome[s]" the news and "look[s] forward to welcoming Prime Minister Kristersson and Sweden as our 32nd NATO ally."

A source told Sputnik following that news that there were "no specific deadlines" on the Turkish parliament's approval of Sweden's membership application.

"The process will take some time, first there will be discussions in the commission, then it will be presented to the General Assembly. I can't give you specific dates right now," the source said.

The Scandinavian state applied to join the NATO alliance in May 2022, but while it met NATO's rigid political and military standards for membership, several allies withheld their support for other reasons, blocking its accession to the alliance, which requires unanimous approval of all member states. Turkiye demanded Stockholm end its support for Kurdish militant groups that Ankara considers to be terrorist organization, and debates inside the Hungarian government about criticisms made of Prime Minister Viktor Orban's government by Swedish political figures has prevented a parliamentary vote.

For several decades, Sweden has maintained neutrality in Europe's standoffs between military alliances, although the left-leaning capitalist state did maintain defense agreements with NATO and other Scandinavian states in the event of an attack by the Soviet Union or its Warsaw Pact allies. That neutrality was maintained even after the USSR and Warsaw Pact were both dissolved in the early 1990s.

After Russia launched its special operation in Ukraine in February 2022, which was triggered in part by the threat of Ukraine joining NATO, Stockholm and Helsinki faced - and eventually acquiesced to - Western pressure to abandon their neutrality and join the Western anti-Russian alliance.