NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has announced that he will travel to Ankara "in the near future" to accelerate Sweden's accession to the military alliance.
Speaking at a meeting of NATO Foreign Ministers in Oslo on Thursday, the 64-year-old Norwegian affirmed his confidence that Sweden will become a member and added that he hopes for the accession process to be achieved "as early as possible".
"I will also travel to Ankara in the near future to continue to address how we can ensure the fastest possible accession of Sweden."
On Tuesday, Stoltenberg tweeted that he had had a phone call with newly re-elected Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in which they discussed the issue of "finalising Sweden's accession to NATO".
Good call with President @RTErdogan. I congratulated him on the election. We discussed key issues for the upcoming #NATOSummit in Vilnius, continued support for #Ukraine, strengthening our deterrence & defence & finalising #Sweden’s accession to #NATO.
— Jens Stoltenberg (@jensstoltenberg) May 30, 2023
Erdogan has repeatedly accused Sweden of harbouring "terrorist" members of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and was enraged by the burning of a Koran outside the Turkish Embassy in Stockholm by a far-right activist in January this year.
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"Those who allow such blasphemy in front of our Embassy [in Stockholm] can no longer expect our support for their NATO membership," Erdogan said at the time.
Sweden and Finland both applied to join the alliance in May last year, just three months after Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Finland formally became NATO's 31st Member State in April. In addition to Turkey, Hungary is the only NATO country which has not yet ratified Sweden's membership.
