Turkey’s Parliament will let its foreign affairs committee carry out work during the summer recess that started Saturday, allowing the country to speed up its ratification process of Sweden’s membership in NATO.
Parliament voted to keep the foreign affairs committee on standby, before it went into recess that will last until Oct. 1, according to the Official Gazette on Saturday. The decision effectively clears the way for deliberations on Sweden’s NATO bid without delay if asked by the government.
Turkey — the only other NATO member along with Hungary that has yet to approve Sweden’s bid — agreed to support its membership on Monday while the Nordic country made various pledges to Ankara after months of negotiations.
Sweden’s accession would clinch NATO’s control of the Baltic Sea and give the alliance the upper hand in the Arctic region — both strategic gateways for Russia — even as Moscow is bogged down by its invasion of Ukraine.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said earlier this week that his government would submit the bill after Stockholm shares a new plan about cracking down on Kurdish separatist groups and alleged supporters of a failed 2016 coup attempt against his government. Erdogan spoke on Wednesday at the end of the NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania.
Erdogan was originally scheduled to attend a ceremony in Parliament on Saturday to mark the anniversary of the coup attempt on July 15, 2016. Hundreds were killed while attacks also took place on the Parliament building and several other government offices.
Instead, Erdogan will attend a similar ceremony in Istanbul later Saturday, according to his staff.
