MADRID (AP) – Turkey on Tuesday agreed to lift its opposition to NATO and Finland’s accession to NATO, ending a deadlock that had overshadowed the opening of a summit of leaders in Madrid amid the worst crisis security in Europe in decades, triggered by the Ukrainian war.
After urgent high-level talks with the leaders of the three countries, the alliance’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, said that “we now have an agreement that paves the way for Finland and Sweden to join NATO.” . He called it “a historic decision.”
Among its many devastating consequences, President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has led Sweden and Finland to abandon their long-standing non-aligned status and apply to join NATO as a protection against a Increasingly aggressive and unpredictable Russia, which shares a long border with Finland. According to NATO treaties, an attack on any member would be considered an attack on all and would trigger a military response from the entire alliance.
NATO operates by consensus, and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had threatened to block the Nordic couple, insisting that they change their position on Kurdish rebel groups that Turkey considers terrorists.
After weeks of diplomacy and hours of talks on Tuesday, Finnish President Sauli Niinistö said the three leaders had signed a joint agreement to break the deadlock.
Turkey said it had “got what it wanted”, including “full cooperation … in fighting” rebel groups.
Stoltenberg said the leaders of the 30-nation alliance will send a formal invitation to the two countries to join on Wednesday. The decision needs to be ratified by all individual nations, but he said he was “absolutely confident” that Finland and Sweden would become members, something that could happen in a few months.
Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson said the deal was “good for Finland and Sweden”. And it’s good for NATO. “
He said completing the accession process should be done “as soon as possible”.
“But there are 30 parliaments that need to pass this and you never know,” Andersson told the Associated Press.
Turkey praised Tuesday’s deal as a victory, saying the Nordic nations had agreed to crack down on groups Ankara considers threats to national security, including the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, and its extension to Syria. He said they also agreed “not to impose embargo restrictions in the field of defense industry” in Turkey and to take “concrete measures for the extradition of terrorist offenders.”
Turkey has demanded that Finland and Sweden extradite the wanted people and lift the arms restrictions imposed after Turkey’s military incursion in 2019 in northeastern Syria.
Turkey, in turn, agreed to “support the 2022 Madrid Summit at the invitation of Finland and Sweden to become members of NATO.”
The details of what exactly was agreed upon were unclear. Amineh Kakabaveh, an independent Swedish lawmaker of Kurdish descent on whose support the government depends for a majority in parliament, said it was “worrying that Sweden does not reveal what promises it has made to Erdogan.”
Andersson rejected proposals that Sweden and Finland had granted too much.
Asked if the Swedish public will see the deal as a concession on issues such as the extradition of Kurdish militants considered by Ankara to be terrorists, Andersson said they “will see that this is good for Sweden’s security.”
U.S. President Joe Biden congratulated the three nations for taking a “crucial step.”
Amid speculation about the role of the United States in ending the stalemate, a senior administration official said Washington did not offer any concessions to Turkey to persuade it to accept a deal. But the official said the US played a crucial role in helping bring the two sides closer and Biden spoke with Erdogan on Tuesday morning at the urging of Sweden and Finland to help encourage talks.
The agreement came at the opening of a crucial summit, dominated by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which will set the course for the alliance for years to come. The summit began with a leaders’ dinner organized by King Philip VI of Spain at the Royal Palace in Madrid in the 18th century.
The agenda for Wednesday and Thursday’s meetings is to strengthen defenses against Russia and support Ukraine.
The invasion of Moscow on February 24 shook European security and brought the bombing of cities and bloody land battles to the continent. NATO, which had begun to focus on terrorism and other non-state threats, has once again had to face an adversarial Russia.
Biden said NATO was “as united and galvanized as I think we have ever been.”
The Russian missile attack on Monday on a shopping center in the central Ukrainian city of Kremenchuk was a sad reminder of the horrors of war. Some saw the moment as the leaders of the Group of Seven met in Germany and just before the NATO meeting, as a message from Moscow.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who is due to address NATO leaders on Wednesday by video, called the mall strike a “terrorist” act.
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko traveled to Madrid to urge the alliance to provide its country with “everything it needs” to stop the war.
“Wake up, guys. This is happening now. You’ll be next, this will knock on your door in the blink of an eye,” Klitschko told reporters at the summit site.
Stoltenberg said the meeting would draw up a plan for the alliance “in a more dangerous and unpredictable world,” and that means “we need to invest more in our defense,” Stoltenberg said. Only nine of NATO’s 30 members meet the organization’s goal of spending 2% of gross domestic product on defense. Spain, which hosts the summit, spends only half.
Stoltenberg said Monday that NATO allies will agree at the summit to increase nearly eight times the strength of the alliance’s rapid reaction force, from 40,000 to 300,000 troops. The troops will be based in their home countries, but will be dedicated to specific countries on the eastern flank of NATO, where the alliance plans to stockpile equipment and ammunition.
Beneath the surface, there are tensions within NATO over how the war will end and what concessions, if any, Ukraine should make to end the fighting.
There are also differences over the length of the line to take on China in NATO’s new strategic concept: its set of priorities and goals once every decade. The latest document, published in 2010, made no mention of China.
The new concept is expected to explain NATO’s focus on issues from cybersecurity to climate change, and China’s growing economic and military reach, and the growing importance and power of the region. Indo-Pacific. For the first time, leaders from Japan, Australia, South Korea and New Zealand are attending the summit as guests.
Some European members are wary of the US hard line on Beijing and do not want China to be an opponent.
In the strategic concept, NATO is ready to declare Russia its number one threat.
Russia’s state space agency, Roscosmos, has marked the opening of the summit with satellite images and coordinates of the Madrid conference room where it is held, along with those of the White House, the Pentagon and the headquarters. of the government in London, Paris and Berlin.
The agency said NATO should declare Russia an enemy at the summit, adding that it published precise coordinates “just in case.”
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Associate press editors Aritz Parra, Ciaran Giles, Sylvie Corbet and Zeke Miller in Madrid, Karl Ritter in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany and Zeynep Bilginsoy in Istanbul collaborated.
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