“It could be October”: Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Photo: Pavel Golovkin/AP/dpa
According to its President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey will not ratify Sweden’s NATO accession until October at the earliest, since the parliament will not be in session until then.
“There is a two-month break in parliament,” said Erdogan on Wednesday at the end of the NATO summit in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius. Parliament would also have to “examine a lot of other international agreements and discuss many legislative proposals” as soon as the MPs were back in October.
Erdogan told journalists that the legislative proposals would be processed “in the order of their importance”. “But our goal is to complete this process as soon as possible,” he added, referring to Sweden’s entry into NATO. After Parliament returns from the summer break, the President of the Parliament “will probably agree that this agreement takes precedence over other international agreements”.
Some Western politicians had hoped that Turkey could complete the ratification process in the coming weeks. Erdogan on Monday gave the green light for Sweden to join the military alliance he had previously blocked for 14 months.
Besides Hungary, Turkey is the only one of the 31 NATO countries whose parliament has not yet ratified Sweden’s act of accession. Turkey had blocked Sweden’s entry since last year on the grounds that the country harbored “terrorists,” meaning in particular members of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
In return for Erdogan’s final approval of Sweden’s NATO membership, the Scandinavian country signed a “security pact” with Turkey and promised regular meetings and an “ongoing fight against terrorism”.(afp)