BREAKING: NATO chief says Turkyie agrees to send Sweden's NATO accession protocol to Parliament swiftly
Stoltenberg made the announcement after talks with Erdogan and Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson on the eve of a NATO summit in Lithuania.This is a breaking news update. Original copy from The Associated Press follows.
"Turkiye has been waiting at the door of the European Union for over 50 years now, and almost all of the NATO member countries are now members of the European Union," Erdogan told reporters in Istanbul. "I am making this call to these countries that have kept Turkiye waiting at the gates of the European Union for more than 50 years."
Erdogan and Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson met later Monday after they arrived in Vilnius, where NATO leaders will meet over the next two days to discuss a host of issues including NATO's future relations with Ukraine. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskky will join them in person on Wednesday.
Turkiye is a candidate to join the EU, but democratic backsliding during Erdogan's presidency, disputes with EU-member Cyprus and other issues have held up the country's progress toward admission in the 27-nation bloc. "However, I think that we should interpret his remarks with caution for now. They could signal everything from setting the stage for a face-saving OK to Sweden, to an attempt to sabotage the NATO enlargement process by raising impossible demands," Levin added. "What can be said is that if he were to actually condition Swedish NATO accession on a reboot of the Turkish EU accession process, then Sweden is unlikely to become a NATO ally any time soon.
He insisted Sweden has fulfilled its part of the deal with Finland and Turkiye, which included lifting arms embargoes on Turkiye, tightening anti-terror laws and stepping up efforts to prevent the activities of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, which has waged an insurgency in Turkiye since the 1980s.
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