Turkey’s Erdogan shows nothing about Sweden’s NATO bid
No reciprocation for US F-16s, says Turkish FM
President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan has seized opportunities in the crisis that is the Ukraine war: exploiting his star turn as a mediator between Moscow and Kyiv, flirting with rapprochement with Syria, rebuilding ties with Israel and the Gulf, and trying to stabilize US-Turkey relations.
His actions appear both urgent and purposeful, given a difficult economy and elections now scheduled for May 14, as Nazlan Ertan reports.
The opposition coalition has yet to name a candidate, and an expected close race looks increasingly tilted, if only slightly, in Erdogan’s favor.
Such was the context last week when Turkey’s foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu came to Washington for meetings with the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
The Biden administration has proposed selling F-16 fighter jets to Turkey, in return, unofficially, and not as a condition, for Ankara to approve Sweden’s NATO membership bid.
If that’s not the official deal, that’s the expectation in Washington. However, Erdogan is comfortable with high-stakes diplomacy. He shows no signs of buying into the clutch, at least not now, and certainly not before the election.
“The two issues are separate and run their own course” Cavusoglu said on Wednesday, and adds that Turkey will consider the membership bids from both Finland and Sweden in the steps set out in trilateral memorandum from June 2022, such as cracking down on anti-Turkish militant groups, extraditing dozens of people and lifting all bans on arms sales to Turkey.
All NATO member parliaments must approve the membership bids, and Turkey is the last hold.
While Ankara is expected to approve Finland’s request, Cavusoglu said: “Sweden is just waitingbeginning of the road” to fulfill the terms of the memorandum.
The Turkish foreign minister also seemed unfazed by the opposition to the F-16 sale from, among others, the US senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ), Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee. Menendez links his support to an improvement in Turkey’s human rights, as Elizabeth Hagedorn reports.
The Biden administration, Cavusoglu said, “should not bow” to objections from some critics on the Hill.
The takeaway from the visit is that both Washington and Ankara are trying to keep relations as stable as possible until after the May 14 election.
“We haven’t gotten to the actual negotiation phase of these accounts, and everyone is collecting and dangling their cards,” said Asli Aydintas base, visiting fellow in foreign policy at the Brookings Institution in Washington. “There won’t be any serious discussions about the F-16 or NATO membership or much else until after the election.”
Exclusive poll on Turkey: Check out our Al-Monitor-Premise surveys at the Turkish election and how people in Turkey and elsewhere in the Middle East, see the food crisis as a result of the war in Ukraine.
The dialogue between Turkey and Syria worries rebel groups
Although an approach between Erdogan and the President of Syria Bashar al-Assad doesn’t seem imminent, the uptick in official talks has worried many of the 3.5 million Syrian refugees in Turkey and rebel armed groups, including those backed by Ankara.
The refugees are worried about increasing anti-refugee sentiment in Turkey, and the prospect of perhaps forced repatriation to Syria, if there is an agreement between Turkey and Syria, as Joshua Levkovitz reports.
Rebels linked to the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army also wonder if their patrons could pull back, leaving them vulnerable to Assad’s forces. Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the jihadist outfit originating from Al-Qaeda, and in power in Idlib, has sought to take advantage of the uncertainty to expand its influence as the only bona fide nationalist force, as Fehim Tastekin reports.
Marita Kassis reporting here on the fighting this week between Russian-backed Syrian government forces and both HTS and Ahrar Al Sham, another jihadist group, in Idlib and Aleppo provinces.
In an exclusive interview with Amberin Zamancommander of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). Mazloum Kobane said he expects a Turkish ground offensive into northeastern Syria as soon as February.
“We want peace,” Kobane said. “But should we be attacked, we will fight with all our might.”
“The Syrian space is heating up in many ways, with the clashes between the many forces on the ground,” Aydintasbas said. “Although fleeting, the signs do not seem to point to an imminent incursion from Turkey, but that could change.”
The Biden administration has repeatedly called on Turkey to refrain from an incursion, and this was conveyed to Cavusoglu in Washington. Like the F-16 sale and NATO expansion, Erdogan is likely to delay his next move in Syria until after May, as talks continue with Washington on a Syrian road map.
Jihadists can stage a comeback
A result of a possible agreement between Turkey and Syria could be that battle-hardened Syrian jihadists return to Turkey and Europe, writes Tastekin.
And Gilles Kepel, now writes for Al-Monitorspeculates that what is happening in Syria cannot be disconnected from Ukraine, raising the specter of a possible new wave of terrorism to Europe.
“The biggest concern ahead now lies in the protracted consequences of the war in Ukraine, which was called a holy jihad by some Chechens fighting alongside Moscow,” Kepel writes. “It could develop into violence against Kiev’s Western allies if the Turkish-Syrian border were to be further destabilized in the run-up toTurkish presidential electionexpected on May 14.”