Erdogan indicates Turkey to ratify Finland's NATO bid

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Wednesday Turkey will "honor its pledge" on Finland's NATO bid after his scheduled meeting with the Finnish president later this week, reported Xinhua.

"We will run the necessary procedures. We will do our part and keep our promise. We will meet Mr. President and fulfill the promise we made," Erdogan told reporters at the parliament.

President Sauli Niinistö will visit Turkey from March 16 to March 17 to discuss Finland's bid to join the military alliance.

Erdogan and Niinistö are scheduled to meet and discuss bilateral relations, Finland's NATO membership application, Turkey-EU relations, as well as other regional and global issues.

Finland's NATO accession bid has to get the Turkish parliament's approval. The latter will go into recess before mid-April, in the run-up to the country's presidential and parliamentary elections slated for May 14.

Ankara previously said it would send Finland's bid for parliamentary sessions before doing the same for Sweden, because the latter has to take additional measures to address Turkey's concerns about terrorism.

Earlier on March 9, a trilateral meeting between Finland, Sweden and Turkey held in Brussels failed to find out any significant progress regarding ratification of NATO accession protocols for Finland and Sweden.

In January this year Turkey postponed trilateral meeting with Finland, Sweden on their NATO bids following the burning of a copy of the Quran in Sweden.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on February 1 said, Turkey will not approve Sweden's bid to join NATO as long as it continues to allow Quran-burning protests, adding his country looks positively on Finland's application for membership.

Turkey is demanding concrete Finnish and Swedish actions to address Turkish security concerns over extraditing hostile groups members before it unblocks their accession into NATO.

Another country Hungary did not ratify the membership yet, although Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban on November 2 assured President Sauli Niinistö that his country will ratify Finland´s NATO accession protocol.

Finland and Sweden submitted the NATO membership applications in May.

Their accession procedure officially started in early July after 30 NATO members, including Turkey signed accession protocols.

So far 28 countries out of total 30 ratified the NATO accession protocols for Finland and Sweden.

The countries ratified the membership protocols are USA, Italy, Canada, Estonia, Norway, Denmark, Iceland, United Kingdom, Albania, Poland, Latvia, Slovenia, Croatia, The Netherlands, Luxemburg, Bulgaria, Germany, Romania, Lithuania, Montenegro, Belgium, North Macedonia, France, Czech Republic, Greece, Spain, Portugal and Slovakia.

In late June, the Foreign Ministers of Finland, Sweden and Turkey signed a trilateral memorandum which confirms that Turkey will support the Finland´s and Sweden´s NATO membership applications.