Turkish lawmakers open debate over Sweden's NATO membership
Turkish parliamentarians have opened the debate over Sweden's NATO membership after a one-year delay.
The lawmakers on Tuesday opened the debate on Sweden’s membership of NATO after more than a year of delays frayed their diplomatic relations.
All the MPs were expected to approve Sweden’s membership of NATO after the Nordic nation gained the public backing of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in July after Stockholm clamped down on Kurdish groups regarded by Ankara as terrorist outfits.
"We see that there is a change in policy in Sweden. We see some decisions taken in courts, albeit few," Fuat Oktay, a senior MP from Erdogan's ruling AKP Party and Head of the Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee said in a televised interview last month.
Turkey lawmakers’ ratification of the bill would leave Hungary as the last holdout in an accession process that pro-Western leaders in Sweden and Finland began in reaction to Russian troops’ special operation in Ukraine.
Hungary is expected to follow Turkey’s lead and approve Sweden’s NATO membership without much resistance.
Sweden says, “at this point” they have “no reason” to negotiate with Hungary about Stockholm’s NATO membership.
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