NATO’s Stoltenberg says Turkey agrees to move ahead with Sweden’s NATO bid

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan has agreed to forward to parliament Sweden’s bid to join the NATO military alliance, Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg
said on Monday, on the eve of a NATO summit in Vilnius.
“I’m glad to announce … that President Erdogan has agreed to forward the accession protocol for Sweden to the grand national assembly as soon as possible, and work closely with the assembly to ensure ratification,” Stoltenberg told a news conference.
Stoltenberg declined to give a date for when Sweden’s accession would be ratified by the Turkish parliament, the grand national assembly, which would decide on the exact timing.
Sweden and Finland applied to join NATO last year, casting aside policies of military non-alignment that had lasted through the decades of the Cold War as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine reframed security considerations.