Turkey’s “divide-and-rule” plot for Sweden and Finland in their NATO application failed
Abdullah Bozkurt / Stockholm
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s government has drawn up a secret plan to create a rift between Sweden and Finland as they try to overcome Turkish objections to NATO membership, hoping to get more concessions during the negotiations.
The action, carefully planned among Erdoğan’s advisers and several diplomats at the Foreign Ministry, had a two-pronged approach. One is based on private messages to delegations representing the two countries to suggest that Turkey may view one more positively over the other. The Turks put forward several proposals to increase the impression that one country has a better chance than the other if they agree to Turkish demands.
The second part of Turkish tactics was focused on shaping the public debate with comments and discussion points about perceived differences between the two countries and how Turkey would like to approach each application separately.
The main goal has always been Sweden, the big dog among Nordic states, according to Erdoğan’s people, who have come to hate the Nordic country for everything they dislike, from a strong tradition of upholding rights and freedoms, conflict version, consensus building, striving. of a rules-based global order and what Sweden perceives as a “feminist foreign policy. ”
Last month Reuters reported how the Turkish Foreign Minister attacked his Swedish counterpart at a meeting in Berlin with NATO foreign ministers by raising his voice against Sweden’s Ann Linde in a breach of the diplomatic protocol and said he was annoyed by Linde’s “feminist policies” that brought “so much drama.”
The first phase of the plan was launched when Swedish and Finnish delegations arrived in Ankara to hold a first round of negotiations on 25 May 2022. The Turkish side demanded separate talks with each delegation to decide whether any of the countries would be willing. to negotiate solo.
In the eyes of the Turkish side, Finland was considered a weak link and Sweden was a tough nut to crack. Therefore, it was the first meeting hosted by the Turkish side with the Finnish delegation, followed by the Swedish group.
Both the Swedish delegation, led by Oscar Stenström, State Secretary and former Ambassador, and the Finnish delegation, led by Jukka Salovaara, Deputy Foreign Minister, made it clear to the Turkish delegation, represented by Ibrahim Kalın, Erdoğan’s point guard at the palace, and Sedat Önel, Deputy Foreign Minister, that they did not want separate tracks and wanted to move forward together.
As a result, the two delegations held a third meeting with the Turkish side to convey to the public that the two countries want to move forward together, as they did in submitting a formal application to NATO in Brussels a week ago.
Although the Turkish side saw that the plan to divide Sweden and Finland had failed in the first attempt, Turkish officials continue to make public comments in order to create a perception of a gap between the two in order to mobilize public opinion and the opposition in these countries. against their governments.
In an interview with the state-owned news agency Anadolu on 31 May 2022, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu said that his government views Finland’s bid relatively positively in contrast to Sweden’s, but said that both countries and NATO want to proceed at the same time with the applications.
In public comments since Turkey declared its opposition to Sweden and Finland’s NATO bid before resolving remaining issues, President Erdoğan focused specifically on Sweden in his attacks rather than on Finland. At a town hall with young people on May 19, he spoke specifically about Sweden and said: “Sweden is a terrorist center and it introduced an arms embargo against Turkey.” Similar comments were made by Erdoğan in the following days.
Frustrated in its attempt to create a gap between the two countries, the Turkish government avoided holding follow-up trilateral meetings. Çavuşoğlu revealed on May 31 that NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg proposed holding trilateral meetings last week in Brussels, first at the technical level, followed by foreign ministers from all three countries during Stoltenberg’s mediation.
He said that Turkey had rejected the proposal and saw no benefit in holding such talks without concrete progress in Finland and Sweden meeting Turkey’s requirements. “There is no meaning or meaning in giving the impression that” we [NATO together with Sweden and Finland] somehow convinces Turkey ” [by holding such meetings]Çavuşoğlu said, recalling that Turkey had submitted a document with all its demands and that Sweden and Finland must respond to the document before such a meeting takes place.
Comments by the Turkish Foreign Minister on a NATO proposal to hold a meeting in Brussels:
Still, on June 1, a day after Çavuşoğlu’s refusal, Stoltenberg told reporters in a joint press conference with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken that a meeting in Brussels with senior officials from all three countries was planned in the coming days under his leadership. To date, no such meeting has taken place.
The issue on the table has a lot to do with domestic policy and the upcoming elections in Turkey, which will probably be held in September, earlier than the planned date next year. Erdoğan and his people are anxious to use Sweden and Finland as slingshots to set fire to their Islamist core base and throw a leg to the government’s nationalist (Ülkücüler) and neo-nationalist (Ulusalcılar) allies, both of which are strongly anti-Western.
President Erdoğan also wants to use the issue to negotiate with the US administration and is particularly keen to track down a federal case in New York that would expose him to criminal charges against Turkish state lender Halkbank’s illegal dealings with Iranian entities, which was done with his personal approval. . The Halkbank case will soon begin in a federal court in New York after all possible delay tactics used by lawyers representing the Turkish government with the US judiciary have failed.