{"id":5601,"date":"2023-06-02T18:48:27","date_gmt":"2023-06-02T13:48:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/?p=5601"},"modified":"2023-06-02T18:52:41","modified_gmt":"2023-06-02T13:52:41","slug":"nato-chief-to-visit-turkey-for-erdogan-inauguration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/news\/nato-chief-to-visit-turkey-for-erdogan-inauguration\/","title":{"rendered":"NATO chief to visit Turkey for Erdogan inauguration"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Brussels, June 2: NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg will visit Turkey at the weekend to attend the inauguration of re-elected President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and hold talks with him, the alliance said Friday.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Stoltenberg on Thursday said during a NATO foreign ministers&#8217; meeting in Norway that he would soon visit Ankara to work towards Sweden joining &#8220;as early as possible&#8221;, after speaking with Erdogan by phone earlier this week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The NATO statement said Stoltenberg would attend Erdogan&#8217;s inauguration on Saturday. The Turkish president was last week re-elected to serve another five-year term.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The statement said the visit would extend into Sunday and Stoltenberg would &#8220;have bilateral meetings with President Erdogan and with senior Turkish officials&#8221;.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>NATO member Turkey has dragged its feet over admitting Sweden to the military alliance. It and Hungary are the only two member countries yet to ratify Sweden&#8217;s membership bid.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Finland formally joined the alliance in April.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Erdogan has accused Sweden of being a haven for &#8220;terrorists&#8221;, especially members of the Kurdistan Workers&#8217; Party (PKK).\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Swedish Foreign Minister Tobias Billstrom on Thursday said his country had fulfilled all its commitments to join, and &#8220;it is time for Turkey and Hungary to start the ratification of the Swedish membership to NATO&#8221;.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Many of the ministers who attended the Oslo meeting said they wanted to see Sweden join before a NATO summit in Lithuania&#8217;s capital Vilnius on July 11-12.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Stoltenberg has said that goal is &#8220;absolutely possible&#8221;.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, whose country is the dominant member of NATO, also said on Thursday that &#8220;we fully anticipate&#8221; Sweden joining by the Vilnius summit.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Brussels, June 2: NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg will visit Turkey at the weekend to attend the inauguration of re-elected President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and hold talks with him, the alliance said Friday. Stoltenberg on Thursday said during a NATO foreign ministers&#8217; meeting in Norway that he would soon visit Ankara to work towards Sweden joining [&hellip;]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":5604,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[85,396,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5601","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-centralasia","category-latest","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5601"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5601"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5601\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5604"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}