Sweden clears a Turkish hurdle to NATO accession

FOR months, senior officials in Ankara had assured their Swedish counterparts that Turkey’s ratification of the Nordic country’s NATO membership bid was just around the corner. The long wait came to an end on January 25th, when Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, signed off on Sweden’s accession protocols, shortly after his country’s parliament backed the agreement. The ink of Mr Erdogan’s signature had barely dried when America agreed to provide Turkey with 40 new F-16 fighter jets and to modernise another 79, a deal worth some $23bn. America simultaneously approved the sale of up to 40 F-35 stealth fighters to Greece.