Finland’s president signs law on joining NATO

Sauli Niinistö, the President of Finland, has signed laws on Finland joining NATO, as per Helsingin Sanomat.

Following a meeting with Niinistö in Ankara on 18 March, Turkish President Recep Erdoğan announced that Turkey would start the approval process of Finland’s NATO accession protocol. “We have seen sincere and decisive steps from Helsinki. We have decided to start the process of ratifying Finland’s application to join NATO in Parliament,” he said.

The Finnish Parliament voted in favour of joining NATO in early March this year.

Finland and Sweden applied to join NATO in May 2022. Turkey objected to their bid by putting forward a number of requirements that Sweden partially complied with.

Rasmus Paludan, the leader of Stram Kurs, a far-right Danish political party, burned a copy of the Quran in a mosque in the northwestern part of Copenhagen, and then in front of the Turkish embassy, in January 2023. Erdoğan reacted to the incident, stating that Sweden should not expect Turkey to support its bid to join NATO.

Soon Finland announced that it might be submitting a separate bid to join NATO on its own, without Sweden. To date, 28 out of 30 countries in the bloc (the exceptions being Hungary and Turkey) have ratified the applications of Sweden and Finland.