Sweden, Finland plans to join NATO risk falling apart in the middle of Turkey
The long-term and often tense negotiations between Sweden and Turkey are over NATO appeared to collapse this week after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Ankara would not support Stockholm’s accession.
Only Hungary and Turkey have not yet approved the dual accession of Finland and Sweden via parliamentary votes. Prime Minister of Hungary, Viktor Orbán, has said its legislature will vote in February. It is widely expected to ratify the decision. But Turkey looks clear to delay NATO’s historic expansion indefinitely.
“They will not see any support from us NATO question,” Erdogan said earlier this week after anti-Islam protests organized by Swedish far-right groups in Stockholm.
The protests outside the Turkish embassy included a far-right Danish politician burning a Koran, sparking outrage across Turkey and the Muslim world.
Other protesters marched through Stockholm waving the flags of Kurdish paramilitary groups considered terrorists by Ankara, with some stomping on pictures of Erdogan’s face.
The Turkish president said after the protests: “So, you will let terrorist organizations run wild on your roads and streets and then expect our support to enter NATO. It’s not happening.”
Minister of Foreign Affairs of Finland, Pekka Haavistosuggested this week that negotiators take a “time out”, while Turkey suspended the trilateral mechanism set up to facilitate talks, which could leave Nato expansion stuck in limbo deep into 2023.
“Poisoned” bands
There is already speculation that Erdogan did not want to hold the accession vote before Turkey’s presidential and parliamentary elections in May. The president hopes to secure a third term, but the country faces serious economic challenges and opinion polls suggest the race will be close.
This was told by Turkey’s former representative in NATO, Fatih Ceylan Newsweek that the bilateral relations with Stockholm had been “poisoned” in the wake of the Koran-burning protest.
Ceylan, now chairman of the Ankara Policy Center think tank, said: “That provocation has been met with serious criticism from almost all circles in Turkey. Now we have a real complication.”
Erdogan’s suspension of trilateral discussions was “unfortunate”, he added. “Finland is not a problem in Turkey. I think it is solved. But now we have the conundrum of Sweden’s accession.”
In Sweden, the feeling is one of “disappointment”, says Mats Engström, senior politician at the European Council on Foreign Relations. Newsweek. “When The NATO application process started, people thought it would be a fairly simple process. There were some who warned about Turkey but they were very few.”
Swedish governments have bowed to many of Erdogan’s demands. These include strengthening anti-terror laws with an eye on Kurdish groups and considering extradition requests for militants and individuals linked to Fethullah Gülen, the US-based cleric accused by Ankara of masterminding a failed coup in 2016.
Last month, Sweden’s highest court rejected a request to extradite journalist Bülent Keneş – angering Turkey, which says he was one of the coup plotters.
– Turkey confirms both that we have done what we said we would do, but they also say that they want things that we cannot or do not want to give them, said Ulf Kristersson, Sweden’s Prime Minister, earlier this month. Extradition issues, he added, “were handled within Swedish law.”
Erdogan’s apparent withdrawal of support is a blow to Stockholm after months of compromise, Engström said.
“It creates frustration in Sweden among the politicians who were most active and advocated membership, but also among the public, who feel that they do not want to be humiliated by Erdogan in any way, and who feel that some of the statements we had to make already at the limit of what was acceptable, he said.
Elections and politics
Turkey’s election is likely to mean any accession vote will be pushed into the summer.
“My prediction is that it has now become almost impossible to complete this accession process before the presidential and general elections,” Ceylan said. The NATO summit taking place in the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius in July could be a realistic goal, he added, but much would depend on the results of the Turkish opinion polls.
“Every party – including the two in power – will try to consolidate their grassroots support,” Ceylan said. “This issue will also be exploited. There is no doubt about that… The number of undecided voters in Turkey is quite high. So all parties are trying to attract attention. They need the votes.”
Viktorija Starych-Samuolienė, co-founder of the London-based think tank Council on Geostrategy, told Newsweek it was difficult to predict what effect the Turkish election will have.
Turkey’s six-party opposition coalition has yet to choose the candidate it hopes will oust Erdogan. “The situation is really tricky even if they win,” Starych-Samuolienė said. “We don’t know exactly what to expect.
“Remember, this system that Erdogan has created has been in place now for two decades. It may be that there won’t actually be any significant changes or shifts right away when it comes to foreign policy and all these debates.”
Anti-terrorism and national security have been “key themes prevalent throughout the years” that Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party have been in power, Starych-Samuolienė said. The president can be expected to lean on his anti-Kurdish militant credentials, which have been bolstered by his talks with Stockholm and Helsinki.
The Stockholm demonstrations also pose a domestic political conundrum for Kristersson and his moderate party. The prime minister blamed the burning of the Koran – by Rasmus Paludan, the leader of a Danish far-right party, and reportedly organized by Russian journalist Chang Frick – on “provocateurs” trying to torpedo Nato’s expansion.
But Jimmie Åkesson, leader of the far-right Sweden democrats party which is a minority partner in Kristersson’s ruling coalition, has dismissed Erdogan as an “Islamist dictator”. He urged the prime minister not to appease Ankara “because at the end of the day it is an anti-democratic system and a dictator we are dealing with.”
NATO red in the face
Finnish-Swedish connection would be simple. The June 2022 NATO summit, held in Madrid, was expected to be a formal celebration of the alliance’s expansion and a firm rebuke of the Kremlin’s aggression in Ukraine.
“If I was sitting in Moscow as a foreign policy official or a security official, I would have been happy about it,” Ceylan said. “We should not be in a position to strengthen the hands of those who oppose Sweden’s and Finland’s accession to NATO.”
Other NATO allies, notably the United States, have tried to steer the discussions to a successful conclusion. But Washington has also tried to avoid linking its problems with Turkey – which largely revolve around military procurement – to the negotiations.
Turkey hopes to secure a $20 billion deal for 40 US-made F-16 fighter jet and upgrade kits. It is also still in talks with the US about its removal from the F-35 fighter jet in 2019; a retaliation for Ankara’s purchase of Russian S-400 air defense systems.
“Behind the scenes, absolutely conversation [on accession] taking place” between American and Turkish representatives, according to Starych-Samuolienė.
Ceylan said the United States the congress and the White House may also await the outcome of the Turkish election before moving forward with any F-16 deal. “They try not to mix these two things together,” he said. “But in practice, I think there is some connection.”
“There will be démarches from the allied countries — including, but not limited to, the United States — to try to resolve this issue the sooner the better,” Ceylan said. “But I’m not sure if these would produce the desired results.”
He added: “The longer this process takes, the more difficult it will be.”
At the same time, the conflict risks spiraling out of Erdogan’s hands. “The more visibility this issue has, the more likely it is that this will be used as a plank of domestic policy,” Ceylan said.
Engström said the view from Sweden was similar. “Erdogan may have started something that was partly for his electoral success, but now it has sparked protests and other parties in Turkey are also using this,” he said.
“I think it’s true that this can also have longer-term effects. Some people thought it was just about the elections and then it would be okay. But it can be more difficult than that.”