Turkey drops its objections to Sweden and Finland joining NATO

The Tuesday decision ends an impasse clouding this week’s NATO summit in Madrid. Turkish leadership initially objected to the Nordic countries joining NATO because of their refusal to crack down on Kurdish militants whom Turkey considers to be terrorists. The countries have agreed to extradite many of those individuals and drop arms trade restrictions against Turkey.

What does this mean? Sweden and Finland — the latter of which shares a long border with Russia — are no longer neutral parties between Russia and the rest of Europe. And if Russia were to attack either of those two countries, the rest of NATO would consider it an attack on all of them and respond accordingly.

Dig deeper: Listen to my piece on The World and Everything in It podcast examining the background behind Turkey’s objections to Finland and Sweden joining NATO.