Pressure behind the scenes: Two countries, eager to join NATO, must make concessions

Pressure behind the scenes: Two countries, eager to join NATO, must make concessions

It should be reminded that the two Nordic countries officially submitted a request for admission to the Alliance on May 18, thus leaving the decades-long position of military neutrality, explaining that Russia's attack on Ukraine changed the international security scene forever.

On the other hand, Turkey immediately blocked further steps ahead of Finland and Sweden on their road to full NATO membership, most resenting their support for terrorism by providing refuge to the Kurdistan People's Party, which Ankara considers terrorist.

However, now the United States and Great Britain have begun to put a lot of pressure on Sweden and Finland behind the scenes in order for those two countries to accept Ankara's demands, writes the Turkish daily newspaper Hürriyet, as Sputnik International reports.

NATO membership must be unanimously accepted by all member countries, and therefore that vote of Turkey is necessary, and their president Tayyip Recep Tayyip Erdogan said "no" at the beginning.

The Turkish government then delivered a series of demands to Finland and Sweden, which Ankara expects to be met in order to change its position on support for Finland and Sweden.

The membership of those two countries in NATO was the main topic of the Alliance's summit, which was held from May 27 to 30 in Lithuania, and even then, there was pressure for Finland and Sweden to join NATO, mostly from the United States and Great Britain.

Turkish participants in the summit said several important diplomats had suggested that Ankara's demands were justified, Hürriyet writes, adding that Finnish and Swedish officials had been suggested to make some changes to domestic legislation to meet Ankara's demands.

Allegedly, as the Turkish paper claims, Finland and Sweden have relented and have already begun to resolve the issue.

This was followed by a statement of NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, who said that important talks would take place in the coming days, in which Turkey, Finland and Sweden would participate, in order to "ensure progress on the two countries' NATO membership".

"Finland and Sweden have already made it known that they are ready for negotiations with Turkey," Stoltenberg added.