Turkey and Hungary put Finland on course to join Nato

‘We have decided to initiate ratification of Finland’s accession process to Nato,’ Erdogan said after meeting Finnish counterpart Sauli Niinisto in Ankara

28 of the 30 Nato members have ratified accession protocols; only Turkey and Hungary have not yet done so

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Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Finland’s President Sauli Niinisto in Ankara, Turkey, on Friday.
Photo: via Reuters

Published: 6:10pm, 17 Mar 2023Updated: 2:24am, 18 Mar 2023

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan ended months of diplomatically charged delays on Friday and asked parliament to quickly back Finland’s bid to join Nato.

A simultaneous decision by fellow holdout Hungary to schedule a Finnish ratification vote for March 27 means the US-led defence alliance is likely to to grow to 31 nations within a few months.

Nato’s expansion into a country with a 1,340-km (830-mile) border with Russia will roughly double the length of the bloc’s current frontier with its Cold War-era foe.

But it also dashes the short-term hopes of fellow Nato aspirant Sweden a Nordic power whose litany of disputes with Turkey ultimately has sunk its bid to join the bloc before an alliance summit in July.

Helsinki and Stockholm ended decades of military non-alignment and decided to join the world’s most powerful defence alliance in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Their applications were accepted at a June Nato summit that signalled the Western world’s desire to stand up to Russia in the face of Europe’s gravest conflict since World War II.