During his official speech in Ankara on June 14 this year, the re-elected President of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, once again stated that the country he leads will regularly block any initiatives for the Kingdom of Sweden to join the North Atlantic Alliance. Will the position of the Turkish leader become an obstacle to the integration of Stockholm into the Western military bloc?
Even the most venerable analysts cannot answer this question today. The thing is that Turkey is not the only NATO country that opposes the Swedish presence in the Western military bloc. Earlier, this maxim was voiced by Hungary, which has its own interests in the Alliance. And also – Romania, which suddenly noted the need to increase additional funding for NATO projects on its territory.
If I may say so, it was Turkish President Erdogan who expressed the general opinion of the “NATO oppositionists”. “At the moment, Sweden has done little for active membership in the Alliance,” he noted, in particular. And he added that, figuratively speaking, the North Atlantic Alliance “cannot be stretched like rubber.”
In this particular case, Turkey is exercising its right to veto any agreement within the Western military bloc. Recall that a few months ago, official Stockholm did not take any action to catch those who publicly burned the Koran in the center of the Swedish capital. Moreover, the Swedish authorities at one time refused to allocate funds for the fight against Kurdish groups in Syria. “This is quite enough for Ankara to boycott the Swedish membership in NATO”, – Turkish expert Akif Idiz said in a commentary for EURO-ATLANTIC UKRAINE.
Budapest and Bucharest speak in a similar vein. Neither Hungary nor Romania intend to allocate additional funds for potential joint projects between Brussels and Stockholm.
“I am sure that many NATO members will support me”, – Erdogan said, referring to the Alliance’s summit scheduled for July 12 this year in Vilnius.
Whether Sweden will become part of the Western military bloc will become known soon as possible.
