Finland should consider joining NATO without Sweden, the Finnish foreign minister said today after Turkey’s president excluded Ankara’s support for Sweden’s candidacy.
The joint accession of the two Nordic countries is the “first option”, but “we must assess the situation” in case “something comes to prevent Sweden from moving forward”, said the head of Finnish diplomacy to public television Yle, in Finland.
Even so, the Minister of Foreign Affairs added that “it is still too early to take a position”.
This is the first time that Helsinki admits a new form of membership in the Atlantic Alliance, without Sweden.
Following the new invasion of Ukraine by Russian forces, Sweden and Finland asked to join NATO, but Turkey, an allied country, demands conditions not to veto the decision.
Ankara asks, above all, for a new position of the two countries towards the Kurdish refugees exiled in Sweden and Finland and who are considered “terrorists” by the Turkish government.
*With Lusa