Why does Turkey actually accuse Sweden of ‘supporting terrorists’?
Russia’s neighbors’ heightened security concerns in the wake of its invasion of Ukraine came to a head late last week when Finland and Sweden, after weeks of talks with US and European leaders, signaled that they would soon join NATO.
Then on Sunday, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said that their applications, which are expected this week, will be quickly tracked by the alliance.
This presupposes that Turkey does not stand in the way. “Scandinavian countries are like a guesthouse for terrorist organizations,” President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Friday in Istanbul. “At this point, it’s impossible for us to be for.”
NATO expansion must be unanimous, so with its dissenting voice, Ankara, which maintains the bloc’s second largest army, can essentially veto. This would be a significant gift to Moscow, which has promised revenge if Sweden and Finland become members.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly pointed to NATO’s expansion to the east in the late 1990s and early 2000s – adding 10 countries, mainly from the Baltics and the Balkans – as the driving force behind his Ukraine invasion.
It seems unlikely that Turkey would take this a step further and stand in opposition to all its NATO members
Even as Russia’s military aggression appears to stimulate further NATO enlargement, Moscow’s stance remains that the bloc’s invasion of its borders poses an existential threat and that control of Ukraine, or part of it, must be taken to ensure its security.
This weekend, shortly after the Ukrainian military forced a Russian retreat from the country’s second largest city, Kharkiv, Russia halted exports of electricity to Finland, with which it shares a nearly 1,400-kilometer-long border, and warned of a “military-technical” response. is still coming.
In recent months, Turkey’s longtime leader has sought to support Kyiv militarily and maintain friendly ties with its Russian counterpart. It seems unlikely that Turkey would now take this a step further and stand in direct opposition to all its NATO members – even if it were not the first time.
Erdogan, who has ever been an opportunist, is possibly looking to use his position to obtain concessions.
In his statements, he referred to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has been leading an uprising in the southeastern part of Turkey for decades and has been branded a terrorist group by the United States and the European Union, as well as Turkey.
Sweden generally supports its Kurdish immigrants and its government supports the US-affiliated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which Turkey sees as an offshoot of the PKK. In November, Kurdish communities in three Swedish cities held events to celebrate 43 years since the PKK’s birth. The gatherings were organized by the KCK, a Kurdish solidarity group that adheres to the ideology of PKK founder Abdullah Öcalan.
Sweden’s relatively friendly attitude towards Kurdish separatists is partly an attempt to compensate for a previous blunder. After the assassination of the then Prime Minister Olof Palme in 1986, the authorities quickly blamed the PKK and continued to harass, imprison and persecute Kurdish groups in and outside Sweden. Turkey encouraged these efforts with semi-regular leaks in support of the PKK assassination theory, as in 1998 when a captured PKK leader allegedly accused Öcalan of the assassination. As late as 2014, Sweden threatened with fines a Kurdish football club that expressed public support for Syrian Kurds.
But over the years, Swedish prosecutors found the PKK theory less and less likely, and by mid-2020, they were essentially clearing the PKK of involvement in Palme’s killing, pointing to a lone, middle-aged graphic designer as the likely assassin.
Shortly afterwards, a high-level Swedish delegation visited the SDF’s leadership in northeastern Syria, to Turkey’s annoyance. Since last year, Sweden’s Minister of Defense Peter Hultqvist held a video conversation with SDF leader Mazloum Abdi and expressed his country’s long-standing support for the group, which played a key role in the defeat of ISIS. In addition, five Swedish parliamentarians are of Kurdish origin.
Sweden is also known for hosting prominent supporters of Fethullah Gulen, whom Ankara blames for a failed coup in 2016. Stockholm Center for Freedom and Nordic Research Monitoring Network – two well-known, Sweden-based stores that mostly report on Ankara’s alleged rights abuses – run by suspected Gulenists .
The follow-up comments from the top government adviser Ibrahim Kalin over the weekend indicate that Erdogan is really doing a little arm twist in the hope that Sweden will end its open support for PKK allies. On Monday, Sweden said it would send a delegation to Turkey for NATO-related talks.
Nevertheless, Erdogan can also look for a more attractive offer. One possibility is that Ankara is hoping for military concessions from the United States, such as re-entering Washington’s production process for F-35 fighter jets or selling F-16s, or a major financial commitment from Europe.
As I described last week, Turkey is inundated with anti-refugee anger this spring, as millions of Turks are struggling to put food on the table and pay their bills.
The 6 billion euros ($ 6.25 billion) that the EU gave to Ankara to take care of its 4 million Syrian refugees as part of their 2016 agreement have now been spent, and Europe has expressed its willingness to renew itself. Ankara has begun building homes for 1 million Syrians in Turkish-controlled areas just across the border, but last week Erdogan promised he would never forcibly send refugees back to their homeland.
This suggests that, despite the land the opposition has gained in recent months by promising to send refugees home, the ruling AKP can stick to its open-door policy, “fighting for suffering Muslims everywhere” when election campaigns begin.
Such an attitude is likely to fall better with Turkish voters if the EU were to give Ankara, say $ 8 billion in refugee funding, in exchange for Turkey accepting NATO’s entry for “terrorist support” Sweden and Finland. Unlikely, perhaps, but it’s within the realm of possibility.
The real question, however, may be whether Moscow would let that happen. Driven by self-interest and self-preservation, Turkey has smartly followed a geopolitical line for several years. But the moment it is finally forced to choose side may be near.
Published: 16 May 2022, 08:01