Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan held two separate phone calls with his Swedish and Turkmen counterparts, Turkish diplomatic sources said Thursday.
Fidan and Swedish Foreign Minister Tobias Billström discussed the Nordic country’s NATO membership, the preparations for the next meetings of the Türkiye-Sweden-Finland joint mechanism and Turkish-EU relations, sources informed.
After more than a year of delays, the Turkish Parliament ratified Sweden's bid and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan signed the formal accession protocol last week.
Sweden and Finland dropped decades of military non-alignment and applied for NATO membership in response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine nearly two years ago. Finland became the 31st nation of the alliance last April after securing approval from Türkiye, as well as Hungary, which is yet to greenlight Sweden's membership.
NATO membership applications require unanimous ratification by all alliance members.
With Turkmen diplomat Rashid Meredov, Fidan discussed energy, civil aviation, as well as bilateral ties and opportunities for cooperation on multilateral platforms, sources added.
Türkiye and Turkmenistan have been working on a pipeline project that would bring gas from the latter to Türkiye and ultimately to Europe via Azerbaijan in the Caspian Sea.
The pair are united under the Organization of Turkic States (OTS), as well, which was established in 2009 as an intergovernmental organization of prominent independent Turkic countries that work together to elevate relations and union among themselves.
Its members are Türkiye, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. While Turkmenistan, alongside Hungary and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC), has observer status, its permanent membership was floated at last year’s annual summit.
