Turkey’s parliament has approved a bill to allow Finland to join Nato, clearing the way for Helsinki to join the western defence alliance as war rages in Ukraine.
The Turkish parliament was the last among the 30 members of the alliance to ratify Finland’s membership, after Hungary’s legislature approved a similar bill this week.
Guardian
Related:NATO leaders have called Russia the “most significant and direct threat” to the alliance’s peace and security, while officially inviting Sweden and Finland to join bloc.
The leaders of the 30-country bloc, in a joint declaration after meeting in Madrid, Spain on Wednesday, endorsed a new strategic framework and launch the largest revamp of its defence and deterrence capabilities since the end of the Cold War, strengthening its forces on its eastern flank and massively ramping up the number of troops it has at high readiness. The declaration also addressed the growing military and economic reach of China.
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The summit opened with one of the bloc’s problems solved, after Turkey agreed on Tuesday to lift its opposition to Sweden and Finland joining NATO.
alJazeera
Turkey and Hungary seem likely candidates for expulsion from NATO, but the organization never formally provided for such a move.Nato ambassadors are expected to discuss the applications on Wednesday and could give the green light to opening formal talks with the pair on their requests, but Turkey has raised objections that could delay or even derail the process.
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Finland shares an 810-mile (1,300km) border with Russia and has maintained strict policies of neutrality then non-alignment since the end of the second world war, viewing Nato membership as a provocation of Moscow. Sweden has stayed out of military alliances and has not fought a war for more than 200 years.
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All 30 Nato members need to approve the enlargement, which must then be ratified by their parliaments, taking up to a year. The alliance has said it wants to move as fast as possible given the potential Russian threat over Finland and Sweden’s heads.
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Ankara has said its objections are rooted in what it describes as Sweden and Finland’s support for members of Kurdish militant groups, and their decisions in 2019 to impose arms export embargos on Ankara over Turkey’s military operations in Syria.
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Many analysts believe the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who faces elections next year, is seeking concessions for domestic political advantage and unlikely ultimately to veto the applications.
Guardian
Which, when a country finds itself ruled by a strongman/dictator, could be never.Within NATO, concerns over the behaviour of individual allies are [...] resolved primarily through diplomatic means, political pressure, and by taking a long-term view. As Jorge Benitez of the Atlantic Council think tank in Washington put it, NATO leaders tend to “wait out the misbehaving national leaders until a government consistent with alliance values eventually returns to power.”
Just Security
In the meantime, countries like Turkey and Hungary, with their "soft" dictatorships, remain in the alliance and can veto any future admissions.The annex to the Washington Paper of September 1948, which contained the first outline of the future agreement, noted the following:The question of including a provision for disqualification under certain circumstances of any of the signatories from enjoying the benefits of the Treaty requires further consideration.In the eyes of the Canadian government, the circumstances that might justify the disqualification of a party had to include the “coming into power of a communist-dominated government” in that state (Commentary on the Washington Paper, Dec. 6, 1948). To deal with such an eventuality, Canada proposed a draft provision entitling the North Atlantic Council to suspend or expel a member state from the privileges of membership (Draft North Atlantic Treaty, Dec. 17, 1948).
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The general feeling among the other negotiating parties was that it would be a mistake to include any provision in the treaty that would raise questions about the voting procedure in the Council.
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The idea to incorporate some kind of suspension and expulsion mechanism into the North Atlantic Treaty was therefore dropped.
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[M]aintaining and furthering the principles on which the Alliance is based — democracy, individual liberty and the rule of law — forms part of the object and purpose of the North Atlantic Treaty. This, in turn, suggests that a failure to comply with these principles may amount to a material breach of the treaty within the meaning of Article 60 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties. Pursuant to Article 60, a material breach consists of:(a) a repudiation of the treaty not sanctioned by the present Convention; orTo constitute a material breach pursuant to sub-paragraph (a), the violation of the principles underlying the treaty would have to be so extensive in scope, so severe and so persistent as to effectively “disavow” or repudiate the treaty
(b) the violation of a provision essential to the accomplishment of the object or purpose of the treaty.
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Should the conditions for the existence of a material breach be satisfied, NATO’s member states would be entitled, by unanimous agreement, to suspend the operation of the treaty in whole or in part or to terminate it either in their relations with the defaulting state or among them all (Article 60(2) of the Vienna Convention). For these purposes, a unanimous decision of the North Atlantic Council, excluding the defaulting state, would suffice.
Turkey later blocked a vote by Nato ambassadors on opening talks immediately, suggesting the first stage of the accession process may take longer than the two weeks the alliance planned.
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President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan told MPs from his AK party the alliance must respect Turkey’s reservations. “Nato expansion is only meaningful for us in proportion to the respect that will be shown to our sensitivities,” he said.
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“So you won’t give us back terrorists, but you ask us for Nato membership? Nato is an entity for security, an organisation for security. Therefore, we cannot say ‘Yes’ to this security organisation being deprived of security,” he added.
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Turkey accuses Sweden and Finland of harbouring members of Kurdish militant groups it considers terrorist organisations, and also objects to their decisions in 2019 to ban arms exports to Ankara over Turkey’s military operations in Syria.
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Other Turkish officials, including Erdoğan’s spokesperson, have been less outspoken, saying Turkey has not shut the door to Sweden and Finland joining Nato but wants negotiations and a pledge to clamp down on what it sees as terrorist activities.
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Analysts believe Erdoğan, who faces elections next year, is largely seeking concessions to score domestic political points and is ultimately unlikely to veto the two Nordic applications.
Guardian
I wasn't expecting that.
I always want to ask why lie about such a thing, but I know it's because he's a pathological liar, and he can't NOT lie. About everything.In a press conference Saturday afternoon in Northern California President Donald Trump did not blame climate change for the deadliest wildfire the nation has seen in a century, but said instead that Finland doesn’t have the same problem because “they spend a lot of time on raking” leaves.
"You’ve got to take care of the floors. You know the floors of the forest, very important. You look at other countries where they do it differently and it’s a whole different story,” Trump said standing next to California Governor Jerry Brown and Governor-elect Gavin Newsom.
“I was with the president of Finland and he said, ‘We have a much different—we're a forest nation.’ He called it a forest nation, and they spent a lot of time on raking and cleaning and doing things,” Trump said, making a moving motion with his hand. “And they don't have any problem.”
Of course it wasn't. You would never rake a forest floor, as that's where all the activity is that supports the soil, not to mention...how many people would it take to rake a forest floor?!The Finnish president Sauli Niinistö doesn’t recall discussing about ”raking leaves” with president Donald Trump. However he does confirm they talked about the California wildfires when meeting shortly in Paris last weekend.
I mentioned him that Finland is a land covered by forests and we also have a good monitoring system and network, Niinistö says to Ilta-Sanomat on Sunday morning and recalls adding the phrase ”we take care of our forests.”
However, raking wasn’t brough up in the conversation, Niinistö corrects.
