NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg will begin a three-day visit to Turkey on Thursday in an attempt to unblock the accession process of Sweden and Finland to the Atlantic Alliance, which has been paralyzed by Turkish suspicions.
Stolteneberg will meet with the main authorities, including the Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and the Ministers of Defense and Foreign Affairs. With the latter, Mevlut Cavusoglu, the Atlantic Alliance chief is scheduled to hold a press conference on Thursday.
Last week, Stoltenberg already anticipated this trip and its objectives. «We will do so to ensure that, as soon as possible, 30 Allies have ratified the Protocol of Accession, which will enable Finland and Sweden to become full members of the alliance,» he declared from NATO headquarters in Brussels.
At the moment, 28 members of the Atlantic Alliance have already ratified the protocol, confirmed Stoltenberg, who said Hungary will carry out the parliamentary process in the autumn. Ankara has made its approval conditional on the two Nordic countries making progress on anti-terrorism issues, mainly to combat groups such as the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
