Finland ready to join NATO as Turkey ratifies accession protocol

The Turkish parliament ratified the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) membership protocol for Finland late Thursday night paving way for Finland to become a member of the defence alliance.

The parliament placed the proposal on vote just before midnight of Friday after a discussion and it was approved by 276 votes to nil.

With Turkey´s ratification, the NATO membership protocol for Finland has been ratified by all the 30 members of the alliance and now there is no obstacle for Finland on its way to become a full-fledged NATO member.

According to Turkish law, president of the country Recep Tayyip Erdogan will sign the bill within next two weeks and after that Finland's application will go to Washington for the final signature.

Although 28 NATO member countries ratified the membership protocols for Finland and Sweden within few months of the applications submitted by the two Nordic countries on May 18, 2022, Turkey and Hungary were the last two countries who ratified Finland´s accession excluding Sweden.

The Hungarian parliament ratified the NATO membership protocol for Finland on March 27 while Turkey ratified on March 30.

Turkey, which had been threatening to block the memberships of Finland and Sweden from the very beginning of submitting applications accusing the Nordic countries of harboring of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and Syria's Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG).

Turkey also demanded that the military and industrial sanctions on Turkey should be lifted and not be put back into effect after the accession.

In late June, 2022, the Foreign Ministers of Finland, Sweden and Turkey signed a trilateral memorandum which confirmed that Turkey will support the Finland´s and Sweden´s NATO membership applications.

Although Finland, Sweden and Turkey held several trilateral meetings, Turkey remained negative regarding Swedish membership and finally agreed to support Finland´s membership.

On July 5, the ambassadors of the 30 NATO states signed the accession protocols at the organization's headquarters in Brussels, with the foreign ministers of the two Nordic countries in attendance.