Hailing a “historic day,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said on Monday evening that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has agreed – after marathon trilateral consultations with Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson on the eve of the Alliance’s Summit – to proceed to forward the Nordic country’s accession protocol to the North Atlantic Alliance for ratification by the Turkish parliament “as soon as possible.”

However, the text signed between the three does not specify when this will happen, as the NATO Secretary General himself said.

What was essentially agreed between Sweden and Turkey is the creation of a mechanism (security compact) through which Stockholm will respond to security concerns raised by Ankara regarding terrorism, with Stoltenberg clarifying that this is not something new, but a confirmation of the conditions set last year in the memorandum signed at the Madrid summit.

Last year, Sweden and Finland submitted applications to join NATO, abandoning long-standing Cold War-era military non-alignment principles in light of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

All NATO countries must agree to applications before they can be accepted, and while Turkey and Hungary approved Finland’s application in April, they have yet to do the same for Sweden.