Stoltenberg will travel to Turkey for bilateral meetings at the weekend. Despite the tense atmosphere, an important representative from Sweden is also coming to the swearing-in ceremony.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg will attend the swearing-in ceremony for re-elected Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara tomorrow. As NATO announced today, bilateral meetings with Erdogan and other high-ranking representatives of Turkey are also planned for the weekend.
It is expected that the main focus will be on Sweden’s NATO membership, which has been blocked by Turkey. On Thursday, during a meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Oslo, Stoltenberg announced that he wanted to travel to Ankara “in the near future”.
Meanwhile, Sweden is sending former Prime Minister Carl Bildt to Erdogan’s swearing-in ceremony. Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson announced this on Twitter in the afternoon. Bildt, who was Prime Minister from 1991 to 1994 and Foreign Minister from 2006 to 2014, is considered a political heavyweight in the Scandinavian country. Like Kristersson, he belongs to the conservative party The Moderates.
In view of the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine, Sweden and Finland applied for NATO membership in May 2022. Finland was welcomed as the 31st member of the alliance in early April, while Sweden still lacks approval from Turkey and Hungary. Turkey has been blocking admission for months, citing what it considers Sweden’s inadequate action against “terrorist organizations” to justify this stance.
Source: Stern
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