As the transatlantic alliance welcomes Finland, Sweden's best chance seems to be to wait for the outcome of Turkey’s May 14 elections in a bid to smoothen the road to its NATO membership, despite the goodwill it has garnered in the Turkish public opinion for its support after the devastating Feb. 6 earthquakes. 

Following the Turkish parliament's unanimous ratification, the Nordic country this week officially announced as a NATO member in Washington. The move decoupled Finland's and Sweden’s NATO bids officially, a possibility that Ankara has long pushed while Washington and NATO were unwilling. While NATO talks between Turkey, Finland and Sweden were ongoing, a senior bureaucrat in Turkish national security circles told Al-Monitor that his government could fast-track Helsinki into the alliance.

Throughout 2022 and early 2023, Turkish officials accused the Swedish side of providing a safe haven for groups that Ankara considers “terrorists.” These include the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which many European countries and the United States also designate as a “terrorist organization,” as well as the followers of the US-based Sunni cleric Fethullah Gulen who is accused of masterminding the 2016 coup attempt against the elected Turkish government. A series of protests in Stockholm in January — including one during which demonstrators hanged an effigy of Erdogan and another during which a far-right Danish-Swedish activist burned a copy of Islam’s holy book, the Quran — poisoned the air further and put negotiations between the Turks and the Swedes on hold.

One Turkish diplomat told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity that the Swedish decision-making processes, which he considered “indecisive,” were part of the problem. “If the Swedes ever ask us why we’re not letting them into NATO, I will tell them that our collective decision-making processes [in the alliance] would get much harder given the judgment of [Swedish] leaders. I will tell them, ‘You people are just not too intelligent to join,’” the diplomat said.