Türkiye takes the next step in ratifying Finland's accession to NATO as Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee will start deliberations on the approval of Finland's membership on Thursday. One day before that, Sweden, not favored by Türkiye for accession, will have its parliament voting on the Nordic country's NATO membership.

Ankara has been swarmed by pleas from Swedish, Finnish as well as NATO officials to greenlight the membership bids of the Nordic countries since they applied to join the bloc last year, spurred by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Especially in the past three months, as the widespread presence of members and sympathizers of terrorist groups like the PKK, its Syrian offshoot the YPG and the Gülenist Terror Group (FETÖ) aroused security concerns for Türkiye.

A trilateral memorandum the sides inked in Madrid last June won Ankara concrete promises it had demanded, especially in counterterrorism laws, terrorist extraditions and the lifting of an arms embargo. The deal envisages Finland and Sweden, as future NATO allies, to show full solidarity and cooperation with Türkiye in the fight against terrorism in all its forms and manifestations, against all threats to its national security.

After a meeting in Ankara last week with Finnish President Sauli Niinisto, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announced that they started the ratification process for Finland's admission to the alliance. Erdoğan cited the Nordic country's efforts to keep its promises as part of the memorandum. He also expressed hope that Finland's NATO membership would be ratified before presidential and parliamentary elections, which are set for May 14. Meanwhile, Erdoğan noted Türkiye is not ready to approve Sweden's bid yet, saying Sweden has not responded positively to Ankara's extradition requests for terrorists and has embraced them. "Türkiye will continue to hold discussions with Sweden on terrorism-related issues, Stockholm's NATO membership will directly rely on their measures," he said.

The Swedish parliament is set to vote on the country's NATO membership on Wednesday. The vote will be preceded by a debate in their parliament starting at 9 a.m. local time. A result is to be expected at 4 p.m., the earliest, with a majority expected to vote in favor. Joining the alliance requires amendments to domestic legislation that need to be approved. The vote does not, however, guarantee Sweden's entry to NATO. All 30 members of the defense alliance have to approve Sweden's accession and Hungary and Türkiye have not yet agreed to Sweden's membership.

Finland and Sweden applied together for NATO membership last May with the assumption that the two Nordic allies would not join the alliance without the other.

NATO, in the meantime, announced that it is continuing the military integration process of the two countries, though the application process is not finalized. The alliance's Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters in Brussels on Tuesday that he was "absolutely confident," that Sweden would also become a full member of NATO.

"I really believe that it will be good for NATO," Stoltenberg said. "It will be good for Finland, it will be good for Sweden, it will be good for all of us to have Finland and Sweden in as quickly as possible. That is also the reason I worked hard to agree last year, which was a historic decision that all NATO Allies, also Türkiye and Hungary made to invite Finland and Sweden. And since then, since June last year, we had the quickest accession process in NATO's modern history because we remember that Finland and Sweden applied in May. In June, they were already invited," he added.

"And since then, Finland and Sweden have a totally new position in NATO, because they now have the position as invitees. This means that they sit at the NATO table, and we integrate Finland and Sweden more and more into NATO's civilian and military structures this integration process will take some time with military planning, with capability targets, and that integration process has not been postponed because the ratification has taken a bit more time than we hoped."

"So the military integration goes on, regardless. That Hungary and Türkiye have not ratified is because part of being an invitee means you can be integrated into NATO's military structures, including interim capability targets. So the military planning integration process is something which is moving on, not delayed by the ratification process," he added.

Sweden's Foreign Minister Tobias Billstrom last Friday said he regretted Türkiye's decision to hold off moving forward on his country's NATO bid, while pushing ahead with that of Finland. "This is a development that we did not want, but that we were prepared for," Billstrom told journalists, adding that the country's priority was now securing ratifications from the two holdouts – Türkiye and Hungary. However, he said he was still not ready to move forward on Sweden, which submitted its bid together with Finland in May of last year. In another setback for Sweden, Hungary announced Friday that it would vote on Finland's ratification on March 27, but Sweden's bid would be decided on "later."

Billstrom declined to comment on the news from Hungary, saying he had no confirmation from Budapest. "We are doing everything that is written in this memorandum, but we do not do less and we do not do more than what is written in it," he said.

"This means that when extradition cases arise that are related to this memorandum, there will be decisions that can be positive and that can be negative from Türkiye's point of view and that is how it will simply be," he added.

Finland and Sweden, which long adhered to military non-alignment policies, sought NATO membership as the Russia-Ukraine conflict escalated. Their applications were accepted at a June NATO summit, but that summit was only a statement of intent. The bids still needed to be ratified by all 30 of the alliance members' parliaments, a process that stalled once it reached Türkiye and Hungary.

Türkiye suspended trilateral talks for the two countries’ applications in late January after Sweden authorized a far-right figure to burn a copy of the Quran under police protection in front of the Turkish Embassy in Stockholm and allowed PKK terrorist sympathizers to hold anti-Türkiye rallies. The desecration of the Quran prompted strong protests in the Muslim world, with Türkiye calling Paludan an "Islam-hating charlatan" and strongly condemning the permission by authorities for the provocative act, which it said, "clearly constitutes a hate crime."