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Turkey expects to ratify Sweden’s NATO accession ‘within weeks’ – Swedish minister

Turkey has told Sweden it expects to ratify its long-delayed accession to the NATO military alliance within weeks, Sweden’s foreign minister said on Wednesday.

But Turkey denied it has given any timetable for the ratification.

Sweden and Finland asked to join NATO last year after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. But Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, whose country is a NATO member, raised objections over what he said was the two countries’ protection of groups that Ankara deems terrorists

Turkey endorsed Finland’s membership bid in April, but has kept Sweden waiting.

“I had a bilateral with my colleague, the (Turkish) foreign minister … where he told me he expected the ratification to take place within weeks,” Swedish Foreign Minister Tobias Billstrom told reporters before the second day of a meeting of NATO foreign ministers.

A Turkish diplomatic source told Reuters that Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan did not comment on a timeline for Sweden’s accession to the military alliance during his bilateral talks.

Fidan told his counterparts in bilateral talks on the sidelines at the NATO meeting that the Turkish parliament would decide on ratification of Sweden’s NATO membership bid, without further elaborating, the source said.

Turkey has demanded that Sweden take more steps to rein in local members of the Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK), which is considered a terrorist group by the European Union and the United States.

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