Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has forced Sweden and Finland to join NATO – but Turkey is blocking it
RThe US invasion of Ukraine has created a moment of existential crisis for Europe, with Finland and Sweden seeking the security of NATO membership. But Turkey’s opposition to that expansion as its leaders face a close presidential election in the spring threatens that plan.
Turkey has long had an uneasy relationship with Sweden, exacerbated by the spat over Nato membership and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s need to appear strong to prospective voters. This has taken on a whole new dimension since a far-right politician burned a copy of the Koran at a protest outside the Turkish embassy in Stockholm this weekend. Protesters in Stockholm last week also hung a picture of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan from a lamppost.
“At this point, I can’t see how the situation could get any worse,” said Paul Levin, an expert on international affairs focused on Turkey and Europe at Stockholm University. “It’s a volatile mix of a Turkish president who is facing an election and needs a fight, and Swedish groups on the far right and left who can use freedom of speech to provoke Erdogan to sabotage the NATO process.”
The protest this weekend was permitted under Sweden’s freedom of expression laws, although Ankara condemned that it took place outside the embassy at all.
Sweden’s foreign minister, Tobias Billström, called the burning of the Koran “appalling”. He wrote on Twitter: “Sweden has far-reaching freedom of speech, but that does not mean that the Swedish government, or myself, support the views expressed”. There have been protests in Turkey over the burning.
Today, Turkey’s foreign minister accused Sweden of being complicit in a “hate and racist crime” for failing to prevent the protests and the killing of Rasmus Paludan, a politician from the fringe Danish far-right Stram Kurs. [Hard Line] party. Mevlut Cavusoglu also confirmed that a key meeting in Brussels to discuss Sweden and Finland’s NATO membership has been postponed, saying such a meeting would have been “pointless” in the wake of the protests.
“The Swedish government has participated in this heinous action by allowing it to take place,” Cavusoglu said during a joint press conference with his visiting Serbian counterpart. “It’s that simple. No one can say otherwise.”
“In this environment, a tripartite meeting would have been pointless,” Cavusoglu said. “It has been postponed because the current environment would have overshadowed it,” he added.
With Turkey facing record inflation and a far-reaching economic crisis, Erdogan is trailing challengers ahead of the May 14 election and has cycled through domestic and foreign policy maneuvers to change the momentum.
“Every move we see in Erdogan’s domestic and foreign policy is to maintain power,” said Ilke Toygur, a Brussels-based political scientist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “Every move we see from now until May 14 would be cleverly designed to keep the government in power.”
In the past, Erdogan has been able to mobilize supporters and silence opponents by positioning himself as a defender of Turkey and Islam on the world stage. The Koran burning has given him the opportunity to shift the political agenda from the economy to the cultural wedge issues that favor him and his Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP).
“The ugly demonstration in Sweden is an insult first and foremost to Muslims and to everyone who respects individual fundamental rights and freedoms,” Erdogan said in a speech earlier this week. “The fact that this heinous attack on the Koran took place in front of the Turkish embassy makes this both a religious and a national issue for us.”
Turkey has long resented the visibility and activism of left-wing and Kurdish separatist movements in northern and western Europe, particularly Sweden, and accuses Stockholm of harboring what it calls militants from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which took up arms against the Turkish state in 1984. The group is designated a terrorist organization by Turkey and other nations including the US, EU and Sweden.
Nicholas Danforth, researcher at the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy, adds that Sweden’s entry into NATO “would have been a difficult issue to resolve under the best of circumstances”.
“In the face of hard-fought elections, Erdogan is eager to exploit it for domestic political purposes. And that makes it even harder to solve,” he adds.
NATO commanders had hoped to speed up Finland and Sweden’s entry into the alliance last year. But analysts and officials have suggested that further talks will likely have to wait until after Turkey’s May election or potentially until the United States agrees on a controversial sale of fighter jets held up by Ankara’s critics in Washington.
Some Turkish officials have suggested that it would be better if two countries separated their efforts to join. But a few days before the Sweden protests, a Finnish newspaper published a cartoon depicting an angry Erodgan shouting about “terrorists,” an article that was republished in the pro-government Turkish daily Yeni Safak days later, with the president’s face blurred.
Asked about the possibility of Finland joining the alliance on its own, Cavusoglu said that Turkey had not received such a request. However, he said that “the problems we face with Finland are relatively fewer compared to Sweden.”
It is clear that Turkish leaders are also stepping up their rhetoric. Devlet Bahceli, party leader of the Erdogan government’s junior coalition partner, on Tuesday likened Swedes and Finns to “Vikings” with the same “cowboy mentality” as Americans.
“If anyone wants to open up our membership for discussion, they are welcome,” he said. “We were not born with NATO and we will not die without NATO.”
Unforgiveness, tensions and ambivalence about NATO membership are nothing new. Athens used its veto power to hold up North Macedonia’s bid to join the alliance until the country renamed itself to separate the nation from Greece’s Macedonia province. Both Sweden and Finland declined pleas to join and reveled in their neutrality for much of the Cold War and afterwards, although they cooperated with NATO and shared intelligence with Western partners.
Some in Washington are open calling for Turkey’s NATO membership to be suspended, along with Hungary’s membership under its pro-Kremlin Prime Minister Viktor Orban. While there is no formal mechanism for expelling a nation from NATO, even moderate voices within the transatlantic security establishment have warned Turkey that it is going too far.
“Soon, some NATO members will start asking: ‘If it’s a choice between Sweden/Finland and Turkey, maybe we should look at our options,'” said former NATO commander-in-chief James Stavridis in a post for Bloomberg . “That would be a mistake.”
Erdogan supporters are already trying to use Koran burning for domestic political advantage. On Wednesday, a writer for Yeni Safak accused eventual presidential contender and Istanbul Mayor Ekem Imamglu of supporting terrorism for failing to forcefully condemn the act.
“He named those who benefited from the serious assault while not condemning the provocative acts of terrorism and the burning of the Koran,” columnist Bulent Orakoglu wrote. “It can be considered supporting the terrorist state of Sweden and terrorism that Imamoglu did not condemn them together with the despicable provocateur Paludan.”
Elections aside, it is clear that Turkey’s anger and resentment towards NATO and the West remains real, palpable and widespread. Turks of all political stripes continue to bemoan the actions of former German and French leaders to derail Turkey’s EU bid in the late 2000s. The continued cooperation between Western military powers and Syrian Kurds linked to the PKK continues to irritate the Turks.
“He [Edogan] have always believed that the West needs Turkey more than Turkey needs the West,” says Danforth. – The anger over how Sweden has handled Turkish issues is real. What works for Erodgan is that so many people see what he is doing as defending Turkish interests.”
Mr. Erdogan is also pursuing Turkey’s interests at a time when he believes the country is optimally positioned to maximize its diplomatic and financial influence. Ankara maintains cordial ties with both Moscow and Kyiv at a time when the two countries are at war. Turkey hosts the operational headquarters for the crucial UN-backed effort to get Ukrainian and Russian food out of Black Sea ports and into world markets.
“In the end, Erdogan has the trump card, because any state can veto the enlargement,” says Levin. “At some point there will be enormous pressure on Turkey. But there is always a concern that if you put too much pressure on Turkey, it would turn to Russia.”