Finland will officially join NATO in the coming days after the Turkish parliament on Thursday ratified the Nordic country’s entry into the North Atlantic alliance, the organization’s Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on Friday, as quoted by Reuters and Agerpres.

“All 30 NATO member countries have ratified the accession protocol. I look forward to raising the Finnish flag at NATO headquarters in the coming days,” Stoltenberg wrote on Twitter.

A meeting of NATO foreign ministers will take place in Brussels on April 4 and 5.

Finland and Sweden applied to join NATO last year in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but the process was delayed by Turkey and Hungary.

Turkey has blocked Sweden’s entry into NATO

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has blocked Finland and its neighbor Sweden from joining NATO from May 2022.

Ankara has accused Sweden, in particular, of being passive about Kurdish “terrorist” refugees in the country, demanding extraditions over which the government has no final say. The burning of a copy of the Koran by an extremist in the Swedish capital in January led to the suspension of talks between Ankara, Helsinki and Stockholm.

After that, the head of the Turkish state made it clear that Turkey is ready to ratify the accession of Finland separately, although initially the two northern countries wanted to advance “side by side” in the process of Euro-Atlantic integration.

Jens Stoltenberg’s comments on Friday came a day after the Turkish parliament unanimously ratified Finland’s accession to NATO.

Hungary also opposes Sweden joining the alliance.

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