ANKARA: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has ended months of diplomatically charged delays and  asked parliament to quickly back Finland’s bid to join NATO.
A simultaneous decision by fellow holdout Hungary to schedule a Finnish ratification vote for March 27 means the US-led defense alliance will likely grow to 31 nations within a few months.
NATO’s expansion into a country with a 1,340-km border with Russia will roughly double the length of the bloc’s current frontier with its Cold War-era foe.