Text/Feiyun
As soon as Sweden and Finland's decision to join NATO was exposed, Turkey became the number one "roadblock" in the middle, which caused the West a lot of headaches, and now more than a month later, this matter has finally come to fruition.
According to the latest report of CCTV News, in order to complete the sixth round of expansion as soon as possible, NATO Secretary-General Stoltenberg called the heads of state of Finland, Sweden and Turkey to sit together to negotiate the matter, this time Turkey changed its previous tough attitude and agreed to the two countries becoming NATO members. The three governments also signed a trilateral agreement, confirming this and incorporating Turkey's demands.
Originally, Turkey opposed the two countries to join NATO, mainly for the PKK, which has close relations with the United States, and in the Syrian civil war, the United States has supported the Kurdish armed forces and given a lot of assistance.
However, turkey and the PKK are "feuds", Turkey considers the PKK to be a "terrorist organization", saying that the organization has attacked Turkey many times, in addition, Turkey has also crossed the national border many times to attack the PKK in Iraq and Syria, but in the eyes of some Nordic countries, it is Turkey that persecutes the PKK.
Finland and Sweden have always provided shelter to the PKK, allowing them to operate and publicize in their countries, and now they want to join NATO, and Turkey wants to give a vote in favor, Turkey is of course very angry, President Erdogan has proposed to Finland and Sweden that if you want to join NATO, you must recognize the PKK as a "terrorist organization" and draw a line with it, otherwise NATO will become a terrorist assembly.
At present, Turkey no longer opposes Finland and Sweden's accession to NATO, for the simple reason that Finland and Sweden have made compromises on the issue of the PKK, and the two countries have clearly stated that they no longer support the PKK and are willing to cooperate with Turkey in counter-terrorism, including extraditing or expelling criminals from the country after Turkey has provided intelligence or evidence.
(Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan)
In short, finland, Sweden, and Turkey all achieved their desired goals in this agreement, and the only one who was sacrificed was the PKK.
In fact, as early as last month, the Swedish side had made it clear that it was willing to call the PKK a "terrorist organization" in order to join NATO, a decision that caused a big stir in Sweden at that time, and many well-known people criticized it, believing that Sweden's approach was to compromise with Turkey, betray the PKK, and even "kneel into NATO".
(President Niinistö of Finland and Prime Minister Anderson of Sweden)
So why do these two countries have to join NATO? There may be two reasons. First, after the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, the situation in Eastern Europe was no longer stable, and Sweden and Finland saw the situation in Ukraine, felt worried and frightened, and believed that only by joining NATO could they ensure their security.
Second, in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, the two countries saw the weak side of Russia, before they were jealous of Russia and did not dare to join, and now Russia is plagued by war, which is a good opportunity for the two countries to join NATO, so they not only want to join, but also behave very impatiently.
As we all know, Finland and Russia have a border of up to 1300 kilometers, once Finland becomes a NATO country, then NATO's threat to Russia is one step closer, and NATO is of course happy to do so, Turkey just relaxed, US President Biden specially congratulated, NATO Secretary-General Stoltenberg also said that it will use "the fastest efficiency in history" to promote Finland and Sweden to join NATO.
Another expansion of NATO means that the risk of war spillover is increasing, and the world situation has become more complicated.