Why Turkey does not want Sweden, Finland to join NATO
When Finland and Sweden announced their interest in joining NATO, the two Nordic states were quickly expected to be accepted as members of the Defense Alliance. But joining NATO requires consensus approval from all existing members, and Turkey – one of the group’s most strategically important and militarily powerful members – is not happy.
The reasons why are complicated, emotional and permeated by decades of often violent history.
Historical decision
Alliance-free until now, Finland and Sweden last weekend announced plans to abandon that position and join NATO in the wake of Russia’s bloody invasion of Ukraine.
Official partners in the alliance since the 1990s, the idea that the Nordic states could actually join the group, made Moscow burst. NATO expansion is something it has previously cited to justify the invasion of Ukraine, also a NATO partner.
Now Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has the power to decide the future of the NATO alliance – and its power and size ahead of Russia’s war.
In fact, Erdogan has already blocked an early attempt by NATO to speed up Finland’s and Sweden’s applications, saying that their membership would make the alliance “a place where representatives of terrorist organizations are concentrated”.
As of 2022, NATO has expanded to allow in three former Soviet states and all the former Warsaw Pact countries.
Bryn Bache | CNBC
The clash has prompted Western diplomats to fight to get Turkey on its side, as Ankara presented a list of complaints to NATO ambassadors about its problems with the Nordic states – particularly Sweden.
What are Turkey’s complaints against Sweden and Finland?
When Erdogan speaks of “terrorists” in this context, he means the Kurdish Workers’ Party, or PKK – a Kurdish Marxist separatist movement that has been fighting Turkish forces on and off since the 1980s. It operates mostly in southeastern Turkey and parts of northern Iraq.
The PKK is classified as a terrorist organization by Turkey, as well as by the United States, Canada, Australia and the European Union.
In fact, Sweden was one of the first countries to designate the group as a terrorist organization in 1984.
However, Turkey says that Sweden has supported PKK members and provides protection for them. Sweden denies this and says that it supports other Kurds who are not members of the PKK – but the details are more complicated.
Sweden’s Foreign Ministry declined to comment on Erdogan’s allegations when contacted by CNBC.
Since 1984, between An estimated 30,000 and 40,000 people have died in the fighting between the PKK and the Turkish government, according to Crisis Group. The PKK has carried out numerous attacks in Turkey.
Members of the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) continue their operations against the PKK, listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States and the EU, and the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia, which Turkey considers a terrorist group, within Turkey’s Operation Peace Spring in Ras Al Ayn, Syria on October 17, 2019.
Turkish Armed Forces | Anadolu Agency | Getty pictures
As for Finland, Turkey’s opposition to joining NATO seems to be more associated – the country has a much smaller Kurdish population than Sweden, but its foreign policy tends to be similar.
Finland has also banned the PKK as a terrorist organization, but joined forces with Sweden and other EU countries to stop arms sales to Turkey in 2019 due to Ankara’s military action against Kurdish groups in Syria.
Erdogan demands that Sweden release a list of people whom Turkey has accused of terrorism. He also wants Sweden and Finland to publicly reject the PKK and its affiliates and to lift their arms embargo on Turkey.
For Hakki Akil, a former Turkish ambassador, the Turkish perspective is “very simple”.
“If Finland and Sweden want to join a security alliance, they must give up their support to a terrorist organization [PKK] and do not give them refuge. On the other hand, they must also accept Turkish requests for the extradition of 30 terrorists, [which are] very specific cases. “
Why do the Kurdish people play a role for Turkey?
The Kurdish people are often described as the world’s largest ethnic group without a homeland – an estimated 30 million people. Mostly Sunni Muslim, they have their own unique languages and customs.
Almost 20% of Turkey’s 84 million people are Kurds, with some Kurds holding important positions in Turkish politics and society, although many say they are discriminated against and that their political parties face attacks from the Turkish state.
Scattered between Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran, they have been severely persecuted, marginalized and even victims of genocide in the counties where they live – see Saddam Hussein’s chemical gas attacks that killed nearly 200,000 Kurds in Iraq in the late 1980s. . Various Kurdish groups have pushed for Kurdish autonomy and state for decades, some peacefully and some, such as the PKK, by force.
The Kurds celebrate to show their support for the referendum on independence in Duhok, Iraq, on September 26, 2017.
Ari Jalal | Reuters
Kurdish fighters in Syria linked to the PKK played a major role in the fight against ISIS and received arms support and funding from the United States and Europe, including Sweden. This triggered huge tensions with Turkey, which then launched attacks on the Kurds in Syria.
“You are talking about people who have been actively fighting with Turkey for more than 40 years and have killed tens of thousands of civilians in the process,” Muhammet Kocak, an international relations specialist based in Ankara, told CNBC.
“Turkey is not happy about the fact that they are suddenly becoming good guys just because they came in handy against ISIS.”
Western governments hailed the Kurdish fighters as allies, and several EU countries imposed various embargoes on Turkey for targeting Kurdish militias in Syria, highlighting the difficult differences between how each side perceived the fighters.
Sweden’s relationship with Kurdish groups
Behind the tension between Turkey and Sweden lies how each country defines “terrorist”, says Hussein Ibish, a senior researcher at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington.
“It is not just a question of Sweden’s liberal policy towards Kurdish refugees and political dissidents and activists. It is also a reflection of different definitions of who and what is unbearable Kurdish extremism,” said Ibish.
“Turkey classifies in principle all Kurdish groups that it strongly disapproves of as PKK front organizations. It includes many non-PKK Kurdish units and organizations in and from Turkey itself, but also the Western-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in Syria and a number of Iraqis. Kurdish groups. ”
Sweden has a long history of receiving Kurdish refugees and asylum seekers, especially political refugees. Several Kurds even have seats in Sweden’s Riksdag.
While most of the Kurds living in Sweden – as local groups say amount to as many as 100,000 – have no affiliation with the PKK, the Swedish government has supported members of other Kurdish organizations, especially the political wing of the PKK’s Syrian branch. , called PYD.
Sweden says that the PKK and PYD are different – but Turkey says that they are one and the same.
Stockholm also supports the political and economic Syrian Democratic Council (SDC), the political wing of the SDF, a Kurdish-led militia group created with support from the United States to fight ISIS in Syria. Ankara says the SDC is dominated by PKK terrorists.
In 2021, the Swedish government announced an increase in funding for Kurdish groups in Syria to $ 376 million in 2023, saying that it remained an “active partner” to Syria’s Kurds and that its funds were focused on “strengthening resilience, human security and freedom from violence”. and improve “human rights, gender equality and democratic development”.
What should Sweden do?
With the Swedish election in September, it is unlikely that the government will make any major concessions to Erdogan that would make it look weak, according to some analysts.
Others believe that in the end Erdogan will not block Sweden’s and Finland’s NATO membership, but instead try to improve its declining popularity at home.
“My suspicion is that eventually Turkey, especially if it can extract some concessions here and there from the Western powers and its NATO allies, will not ultimately try to block Finland and Sweden from joining the organization,” the Arab Gulf States Institutes said. Ibish. sa.
“The Russian invasion of Ukraine and the fact that the war is now focusing on parts of the country bordering Turkey and of deep strategic and even historical interest in Ankara have reminded many Turks of the value of NATO membership.”
Still, NATO could be in crisis for a while if Erdogan is not satisfied with Sweden’s and Finland’s response to his demands.
