Late Thursday night, Turkey’s Parliament ratified the protocol on Finland’s accession to the Atlantic Alliance, which means that Helsinki now has the approval of all NATO allies.
After an intense session in the Turkish Grand National Assembly that lasted for hours, well into the night, Turkish parliamentarians gave the ‘green light’ to Finland’s accession to NATO, the Anadolu news agency reported.
With this vote and following similar steps taken earlier this week by the Hungarian Parliament, Finland has now received the favorable vote of all the member states of the Atlantic Alliance, which places the Scandinavian country on the doorstep of joining the bloc.
Once all Alliance members and candidates have approved the accession protocols, the approved documents must be sent to the United States, where they are deposited with the government. The applicant country only becomes a NATO member when Washington has all the documents.
TURKEY’S VETO, THE MAIN STUMbling block Finland and neighboring Sweden jointly applied for NATO membership in May, an entry that the Atlantic Alliance hoped would be «express» and ready for the Madrid summit. However, Turkish reticence over the alleged collusion of Swedes and Finns with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and the People’s Protection Units (YPG) frustrated immediate processing.
At that NATO leaders’ summit in Madrid, the Swedish, Finnish and Turkish leaders reached a three-way agreement in which the Scandinavians pledged to cooperate in the fight against terrorism in exchange for Ankara unblocking the path to NATO membership.
Turkey ended up appreciating the steps taken by Finland and committed itself to a vote on NATO membership, but not Sweden, which it considers has not fulfilled its commitments. In addition, a series of protests in Stockholm against Erdogan and Islam further heated up the situation in early February.
In this context, and although Finland had initially planned to join the Atlantic Alliance hand in hand with its neighbor and main ally, in the end it did not look unfavorably on its own on its way to the bloc due to the stalemate in the Swedish case.
The Belgian capital, Brussels, hosts next week a new summit of foreign ministers of the member states of the Atlantic Alliance, which Finland could attend as the 31st member of the bloc.
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
