International

The Turkish parliament has given its long-awaited approval to Sweden’s membership of Nato, bringing the Nordic country significantly closer to joining the western military alliance after months in limbo.

Three months after Recep Tayyip Erdoğan submitted a bill on approving membership to parliament, MPs voted in favour of ratifying it late on Tuesday night. The Turkish president is expected to sign the bill into law in the coming days.

     Turkey’s approval leaves Hungary as the only country still to ratify Swedish membership. Earlier on Tuesday, the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, hinted at progress by inviting Sweden’s prime minister, Ulf Kristersson, to visit for negotiations on the question.

In a letter, he wrote: “I believe that a more intensive dialogue could contribute to reinforcing trust between our countries and institutions thus allowing to further strengthen our political and security arrangements.”

A spokesperson for Kristersson said they did not have any comment on the invite for now, but Sweden’s foreign minister, Tobias Billström, said before responding the government would need to “think through what the letter signals”.

Sweden applied to join Nato in May 2022, at the same time as Finland, in a historic shift in its security policy prompted by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February earlier that year.