NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg is headed to Turkey to push recently re-elected Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to end objections to the admission of Sweden into the military alliance. NATO is hoping to have Sweden as a member by the annual meeting in Lithuania mid-July. The admission of a new member requires a unanimous vote of all 31 members; currently Turkey and Hungary are the only members who have stalled on Sweden’s admission. Hungary has not made the reasons for its objection public, but Turkey accuses Sweden of being too lenient on Kurdish groups based in Sweden, which Turkey labels as “terrorist organizations.” Sweden and Finland applied for membership last year after Russia invaded Ukraine. Sweden’s foreign minister, Tobias Billström, said Thursday that “it is time for Turkey and Hungary to start the ratification of the Swedish membership to NATO.â€
