ANKARA — Turkey’s Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan on Tuesday discussed Sweden’s NATO accession with his US and Swedish counterparts, Antony Blinken and Tobias Billstrom, as well as NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg, as analysts point to the deepening mistrust between Washington and Ankara over the impasse.
Following the bilateral US-Turkey meeting on the sidelines of the NATO Foreign Ministers' Summit in Brussels, Blinken said, “We discussed the importance of the longstanding US-Turkish cooperation as NATO allies and ratifying Sweden’s NATO accession.” He said they also addressed the “need to sustain humanitarian assistance to Gaza and efforts to secure further releases of hostages” that were taken during the Hamas Oct. 7 attack.
The Turkish Foreign Ministry, in turn, said Sweden's membership in the transatlantic alliance was taken up during all three meetings, without elaborating further.
Billstrom is joining the NATO summit as a formal invitee as Sweden's membership process is still pending ratification by Turkey and Hungary.
