Turkey and its President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan have decided on Finland’s accession to NATO, which will be officially announced on Friday during the visit of the Finnish President, announced on Wednesday in Helsinki, AFP and Agerpres news agencies reported.

“The Turks were hoping that I would be there to get their answer when they announced their decision. Of course, I have accepted the invitation and will go to receive an expression of their intentions,” Finnish President Sauli Niinisto said in a statement.

Now in the election campaign for a new mandate, Turkey’s president, who has blocked Finland and Sweden from joining since last year, already made it clear on Wednesday morning that he would respond favorably to a “promise” to allow Helsinki to join the North Atlantic Alliance.

“We will do our part, fulfill this promise. On Friday, we will meet with the president, we will do what the promise requires of us,” Erdogan said.

It is the Turkish parliament that must ratify Finland’s accession to NATO, presented together with Sweden in May 2022.

The date is unknown, and it remains to be seen whether the vote will take place before or after Turkey’s May 14 election.

Even if Hungary has yet to ratify its accession, the Helsinki agreement with Turkey paves the way for Finland to join NATO. Finland, a Scandinavian country bordering Russia, was forced to maintain neutrality after World War II before becoming militarily non-aligned at the end of the Cold War.

Instead, things are much more complicated in Sweden, against which Ankara still has objections.

Turkey accuses Stockholm of being passive about Kurdish “terrorists” living in Sweden.

Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson admitted on Tuesday that the likelihood of Finland joining NATO before Sweden has increased in recent weeks.

However, he remains hopeful of quickly completing Stockholm’s accession to the upcoming NATO summit, which will be held in July in Vilnius.

While it is difficult to imagine from a political point of view, the candidacies of Sweden and Finland are a direct consequence of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, a sign of a great threat to European security from the side of Moscow, both countries believe.