On Monday, the Hungarian parliament ratified Finland’s entry into NATO, the military alliance that includes the United States and most European countries, and which Finland had chosen not to join for over seventy years.
Finland’s government changed its mind last year after Russia invaded Ukraine, and was formally invited to join the alliance in July, along with Sweden. But before a country officially becomes a member of NATO, membership must be ratified by the parliaments of the other countries in the alliance: as of Monday, the only ones who have not yet ratified Finland’s membership were Hungary and Turkey.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán had repeatedly postponed parliamentary votes, accusing Finland and Sweden of spreading “complete lies” about the state of democracy in Hungary. In the end, on Monday, the Hungarian parliament voted in favor of membership by 182 votes in favor, 6 against, with no abstentions.
Ratification by the Turkish parliament should also arrive in the coming weeks, while for Sweden things are a bit more complicated: for years, Sweden has been offering support to the Kurds of the PKK, an organization that Turkey, the United States and the European Union (therefore also Sweden) consider terrorist, and against which the Turkish government has been at war for years. But the allegations of terrorism against the PKK are highly disputed and debated, also because the Kurdish population in Turkey is often subjected to persecution. As a result, Sweden has in some cases treated PKK members as political refugees, providing them with protection and refusing to extradite them to Turkey.
