The Turkish Parliament is not expected to hold a full vote on Sweden’s NATO accession protocol before mid-January, parliamentary sources told Agence France-Presse (AFP) on Thursday.
Sweden’s accession to the U.S.-led Western alliance was approved by the foreign affairs committee on Tuesday, bringing an end to a 19-month standoff that strained ties between Ankara and its Western allies.
It must now be voted by the full 600-seat Parliament, where President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s ruling alliance holds the majority. The president would then need to sign it into law.
Although Erdoğan’s party could call for a special session to discuss the measure, it will likely wait until after Parliament’s scheduled return on Jan. 15.
The Nordic country, together with its neighbor Finland, abandoned decades of military nonalignment and sought to join NATO after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
Türkiye and Hungary were the only NATO members to oppose their applications. Türkiye eventually relented on Finland, ratifying its bid in April, but continued to oppose Swedish membership. Ankara has been angered mainly by the Nordic country’s tolerance of members and sympathizers of the PKK. This terrorist group has led a bloody campaign against the Turkish state since the 1980s, killing over 40,000 civilians, as well as the Gülenist Terrorist Group (FETÖ), which orchestrated a bloody coup attempt in 2016.
Sweden tightened its counterterrorism legislation in response to Turkish pressure. Erdoğan lifted his objections to Sweden’s application at a NATO summit in July while pushing for concessions from the United States.
Erdoğan made Türkiye’s ratification of Sweden’s application conditional on the U.S. Congress “simultaneously” approving Ankara’s request for 40 F-16 jets and spare parts.
Even though the U.S. administration has promised to move forward with the sale, its approval has met resistance from Congress.
Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan discussed Sweden’s NATO membership in a phone call with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Wednesday, a diplomatic source said, a day after the parliamentary committee greenlighted the protocol.
Fidan told Blinken that Türkiye now expects the U.S. administration and Congress to “act in line with the spirit of alliance and to fulfill the commitments made” about the F-16s.
NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg hailed the parliamentary committee’s approval of Sweden’s NATO bid, urging Türkiye and fellow holdout Hungary to complete their ratifications “as soon as possible.”
As Parliament will be in a two-week recess, a timetable also “depends on the negotiations with the Americans,” another parliamentary source told AFP.
