The President of the United States, Joe Biden, can come to Sweden and Finland to the rescue and perhaps solve the NATO tangle. This is what several experts on international arms trade say, with whom VG has spoken.

On Thursday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan maintained his opponent against the NATO membership search from Sweden and Finland. Erdogan demands that Sweden cut relations with Kurdish organizations that Turkey has terror-listed.

Turkey’s protests have triggered hectic diplomatic activity both in NATO and between Turkey, Sweden, Finland – and now also the United States.

Finnish President Sauli Niinistö and Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson are on Thursday afternoon in meeting with US President Joe Biden in Washington.

– Finland and Sweden want to make NATO stronger, they meet all NATO criteria and a little more. Today, there is no doubt that NATO is more relevant than ever, as Joe Biden would be welcome.

– I have a hard time imagining that Sweden will give up its restrictions on arms exports to Turkey, as long as other EU countries that are also members of NATO continue to hold back, says Pieter Wezeman, senior researcher at SIPRI, the Swedish Peace Research Institute, to VG.

– How will the United States help Sweden and Finland in the conflict with Turkey, to open the way for NATO membership?

– I will not be surprised if they will use the negotiations on the sale of new F-16s to Turkey, to resolve the herd on NATO membership. It will be easier for the United States to allow Turkey to buy the previous generation’s fighter jets, than it will be for Sweden to give in to Turkey’s demand to remove the arms export ban, Wezeman says.

NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg expects Turkey’s objections to the membership search from Sweden and Finland to be clear within weeks.

– Our goal is to get this clarified quickly. It is not uncommon in NATO for there to be disagreement before major decisions. But we have long experience of sitting down and finding solutions at Stoltenberg in Copenhagen on Thursday afternoon.

– The United States must deliver

– What Turkey wants from facilitations in the arms trade from Sweden and Finland, it is probably the United States that must deliver, says senior researcher at Prio, Nicholas Marsh.

At the Norwegian Peace Research Institute, he closely follows the international arms trade.

– Turkey has put heavy pressure on Sweden and Finland to change a very strong export regime on weapons. One possible solution is that the countries can give Turkey a declaration that can ease some of their own practice. But to me, it seems as if Turkey uses Sweden’s and Finland’s NATO applications as a means of pressure to buy weapons systems from the USA, Marsh tells VG.

The US Congress is considering a proposal to sell brand new F-16 fighter jets to Turkey.

Turkey had an agreement with the United States to buy the F-35, the latest generation of American fighter jets, which Norway, among others, managed to acquire. Men Turkey was thrown out of the F-35 program after President Erdogan decided to buy the Russian air defense system S-400.

Sweden was the strictest

In 2019, the Swedish government tried to persuade the EU to impose a ban on arms sales in Turkey. The result was a somewhat diluted statement by EU foreign ministers to show restraint with arms exports to countries that are in regional conflicts or where there is a risk of human rights violations.

– The EU decision from 2019 is not a ban on exports, but a recommendation to the member states. It has been interpreted differently in different EU countries, but hardly any EU country introduced such strict rules as Sweden, says Nicholas Marsh to VG.

Sweden has since continued its tough line against Turkey: As the only EU country, Sweden in 2019 revoked all export permits to Turkey, which had previously been granted to the Swedish arms industry.

The annual reports on arms exports to the Swedish Parliament, shows that the government in Stockholm has not allowed arms exports to Turkey after this. In both 2020 and 2021, it was a full stop. arms exports from Sweden to Turkey.

23 applications from Swedish business and industry to export military equipment to Turkey were flatly rejected in the years between 2016 and 2020.

– It is probably easier for Sweden to give in to the export ban than to open up to negotiate with Turkey about the status of the Kurds in Sweden, says Nicholas Marsh.

Norway: Stopped applications

The NATO country Norway also has export restrictions on the sale of military equipment to Turkey. They are not different from Sweden’s strict rules:

“In the autumn of 2019, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs decided that, in the light of Turkey’s military operations in northern Syria, no new applications for export licenses for defense equipment and such multi-purpose goods for military use would be processed for Turkey. This coincided in time with the EU and Sweden making similar decisions “, writes Mari Bangstad, communications adviser at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in an email to VG.