One day after Türkiye greenlit its accession bid for NATO, Finland's President Sauli Niinistö defended their decision to proceed with accession to NATO without its neighbor Sweden.

"Should we have rejected ratification by Türkiye? That sounds a bit crazy," Niinistö said in an interview with Sweden's SVT national public service that was broadcast in full on Saturday evening. "It would have been a very problematic situation if we had said 'no' to Ankara," he added.

Niinistö's comments came after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announced on Friday that his government would begin the ratification process for Finland.

While he had always emphasized that Finland would go "hand-in-hand" with Sweden to the extent that the decision was theirs, ratification ultimately lay with Türkiye and Hungary, the two NATO members yet to approve the applications, Niinistö said.

After decades of neutrality, the two Nordic countries applied to join the trans-Atlantic defense alliance last May following Russia's full-blown invasion of Ukraine. They clarified that they wished to join together.