Yahoo News 
Turkey Parliament May Start Debate on Sweden NATO Bid Next Week
(Bloomberg) -- Turkey’s parliament may schedule a debate next week in the foreign relations committee over Sweden’s bid to join the NATO military alliance after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan earlier this week asked lawmakers to start proceedings.
Most Read from Bloomberg
Apple Plans AirPods Overhaul With New Low- and High-End Models, USB-C Headphones
Israel Is Losing Support as Fury Grows Over Its Strikes on Gaza
What Happened Inside Morgan Stanley After Ted Pick Was Named CEO
Trump Ally Mike Johnson Elected House Speaker, Shifting GOP Further Right
Still, a ratification of the Nordic country’s membership depends on Stockholm’s commitment to cooperate against terrorism, Fuat Oktay, the head of the committee, said Wednesday.
The steps in Turkey bring Sweden closer to becoming a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, a process that’s been pending for almost a year and a half.
Turkey has been one of the two last holdouts — along with Hungary — standing in the way of NATO’s northern enlargement. It’s accused Stockholm of failing to adequately crack down on supporters of separatist Kurdish militants that Turkey regards as terrorists. Sweden insists it fulfills NATO’s membership criteria and has taken steps agreed with Turkey, such as ending an arms embargo and tightening anti-terror laws.
If approved by both countries, Sweden’s membership would realign the security dynamic in Europe following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, with Finland’s membership in the alliance already realized in April.
“We will intensely work on Sweden’s NATO membership. We have to be convinced and will look into whether the protocol was honored,” Oktay, a member of Erdogan’s ruling AK Party told Bloomberg in Ankara, referring to a document the countries signed at a NATO summit in Madrid in 2022.
Read More: Sweden’s New Cabinet Pledges to Deliver on NATO Deal With Turkey
“We will come up with a schedule for meetings,” Oktay said. “It may happen next week or the week after. We have to make preparations first.”
Ali Sahin, another member of the committee who is also from the governing AK Party, said the debate on Sweden is likely to be scheduled for “no longer than next week.”
Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek
Sam Bankman-Fried Takes Stand in Reminder of Crypto’s Epic Fall
X, One Year Later: How Elon Musk Made a Mess of Twitter’s Business
Venezuela’s Primary Sweep Puts Maduro and Biden in the Hot Seat
No One Understands Corporate Boycotts Like This Former Trump Researcher
©2023 Bloomberg L.P.
