Recep Tayyip Erdoan, president of Turkey, will support Sweden’s application to join NATO.
After delaying the Scandinavian country’s application for membership for months, he has consented to “as soon as possible” deliver the accession protocol to parliament.
On the eve of the alliance’s summit in Lithuania, Jens Stoltenberg, the secretary-general of Nato, issued the declaration following conversations with Erdoan and Ulf Kristersson, the prime minister of Sweden.
He said in a statement on Twitter this is a ‘historic step which makes all Nato allies stronger and safer’.
Stoltenberg declined to give a date for when Sweden’s accession would be ratified by the Turkish parliament, the grand national assembly, which would decide on the exact timing.
Kristersson was greeted by an ovation as he walked into the lobby of his hotel in Vilnius, shortly after securing the long-awaited assent.
This comes less than two weeks after the country gave the go-ahead to two men to hold a Quran-burning protest outside a mosque, a ‘despicable’ decision which was widely condemned in Turkey.
Sweden and Finland applied to join Nato last year after Russia launched a war in Ukraine.
With the move, the two countries casting aside policies of military non-alignment that had lasted through the decades of the Cold War as the invasion reframed the security considerations.
But Sweden’s accession has been held up by objections from Turkey since 2022.
Hungary is now the only Nato member who has not yet agreed to it joining the alliance.
UK’s foreign secretary James Cleverly tweeted his approval of Turkey agreeing to support Sweden, stressing it is ‘in everyone’s interest’.
He wrote: ‘Their accession makes us all safer. The UK welcomes the steps Turkey has taken today to bring this closer.
‘We continue to stand by our Swedish friends Tobias Billstrom.’