(Bloomberg) -- Turkish parliament is set to vote on Sweden’s entry into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization this week, bringing the alliance to the cusp of completing its Nordic expansion.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s AK Party, which commands a majority in the parliament together with its nationalist ally, will seek parliament’s approval to ratify Sweden’s long-awaited NATO membership, a senior government official who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter told Bloomberg on Monday. 

Erdogan’s backing for Sweden’s membership comes as part of a complex web of geopolitical moves. His administration has been trying to acquire 40 new F-16 fighter jets and 79 upgrade kits to modernize an existing fleet of warplanes since 2021.

President Joe Biden has made Turkey’s approval of Sweden’s NATO membership a prerequisite for the sale of fighter aircraft to Ankara. Erdogan also said the two issues are linked and can only be resolved together. Turkish approval would leave Hungary as the last holdout to the bloc’s Nordic expansion, a process that’s been pending for more than a year and a half.

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Sweden’s entry will bolster the NATO, reinforcing its northern reach and improving its ability to defend its eastern flank following Finland’s admission last April. The two Nordic nations, which had previously shunned membership in military alliances, applied to join shortly after Russia began waging outright war in Ukraine in early 2022.

A key Turkish parliamentary committee backed Sweden’s bid last month after Stockholm made progress in meeting Turkish demands to crack down on supporters of separatist groups outlawed in Turkey, including the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, which is designated as a terrorist organization by the EU and the US.

Sweden has continued to insist it complies with NATO’s membership criteria, and has also separately tightened laws against terrorism and lifted arms export restrictions to Turkey. Its laws on freedom of speech make it hard for the government to stifle public expressions of support for Kurdish independence.

Moscow’s attack on Ukraine roiled European geopolitics and led to Finland and Sweden applying to join Brussels-headquartered NATO, whose members commit to defending each other against attacks by foreign powers. The move is primarily intended to deter any attack against the Nordic nations. With Finland’s entry, NATO grew to 31 members. It has for long been seen by Russian President Vladimir Putin as a hostile alliance.

Sweden is expected to send hundreds of troops to Latvia to bolster NATO forces there once it gains full membership in the alliance. The bloc had about 1,700 troops in Latvia as of 2022 as part of its enhanced forward presence, similar to battle groups in other Baltic nations and Poland.

(Updates with details from third paragraph)

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