The mobilization of NATO and its Secretary-General, Jens Stoltenberg, invited the burning of the Koran in Sweden which in turn caused an angry reaction in Ankara.

As Stoltenberg announced, talks on Sweden’s accession to NATO, which are blocked by Turkey, with the participation of representatives of the two countries and Finland, will take place in Brussels on July 6.

Many leaders of the Alliance member-states hope that Sweden will join NATO at the NATO summit on July 11 and 12 in Vilnius and are pressing Ankara to lift its veto to achieve this.

As of May 2022, when Sweden also applied for NATO membership in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, it is still awaiting the approval of Turkey and Hungary, which have not ratified the Nordic country’s membership.

Hungarian politicians have stressed that the vote to ratify Sweden’s NATO membership will not take place until fall. This practically means that it is unlikely that the accession will take place at the Vilnius meeting on July 11-12.

Turkey maintains that Sweden hosts members of so-called terrorist organizations on its soil and has requested their extradition as a step towards validating its membership. It has also expressed its anger at the anti-Turkish protests that have taken place in the Scandinavian country.

Source: CNN Greece

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