Finland insists it still wants to join NATO with Sweden, rejecting Turkey’s suggestion that it could join the alliance alone amid the apparently intractable standoff between Stockholm and Ankara.
The two Scandinavian states have long made defense and security decisions in unison, and both submitted their formal bids for NATO membership on the same day last May, torn from their traditional military non-alignment by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
However, their joining has been delayed by Turkey, which accuses Sweden of harboring “terrorist” elements linked to Turkish dissident groups such as the PKK, the Kurdish militia and the Gulenists, a religious movement.
Finnish Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto insists that the country will join NATO together with Sweden.
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu proposed to consider these two applications separately. “It
