Brussels: Europe and the Arabs
The NATO headquarters in Brussels announced that the Secretary-General, Jens Stoltenberg, will visit Finland tomorrow, Tuesday, February 28, 2023. The visit program, according to a NATO statement, includes meetings of the Secretary-General with the President, Sauli Niinisto, the Prime Minister, Ms. Sanna Marin, and the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Pekka Haavisto.
The NATO Secretary General will also participate in the Samak Nordic Summit in Helsinki
The announcement of the visit coincides with the Turkish Foreign Minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu, announcing, on Monday, that negotiations between Turkey, Sweden and Finland regarding their accession to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) will resume on March 9.
"The meeting will take place on the ninth of March," Cavusoglu said during a press conference in Ankara.
At the end of January, Turkey suspended the negotiations and postponed, in particular, a tripartite meeting that was scheduled for February, after several anti-Turkish and anti-Islam demonstrations in Stockholm.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, during a visit to Ankara in mid-February, called for the inclusion of Finland and Sweden "now" after Ankara blocked their candidacy to join NATO since May.
And the Turkish Foreign Minister acknowledged the existence of some progress in the negotiations, but he considered in his speech, Monday, that "Sweden has not taken any satisfactory action" so far.
"Without this progress, it is impossible for us to accept Sweden's accession to NATO," said Cavusoglu, who stood by his Hungarian counterpart, Peter Siarto.
Turkey blames Sweden in particular for harboring Kurdish activists and supporters, which it considers "terrorists", especially supporters of the Kurdistan Workers' Party.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan hinted in early February that the Turkish parliament might ratify Finland's accession without Sweden, although the two countries submitted their request simultaneously.
And decided the leaders of the thirty members of NATO to invite Sweden and Finland to join NATO during a summit held in Madrid last June.
Thirty countries have signed accession protocols and only 28 have ratified them. Only Turkey and Hungary have not ratified the agreement, but the Hungarian parliament will hold a vote in this regard in early March.
The decision of the Swedish authorities in January to allow a demonstration in front of the Turkish embassy in Stockholm, during which a Quran was burned, angered Ankara.
Following Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Finland and Sweden submitted a joint application to join the alliance, thus abandoning decades of military non-alignment.