Erdogan suggests that Turkey could accept Finland in NATO without Sweden
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan arrives at a NATO summit in Madrid, Spain on June 29, 2022.
Nacho Doce | Reuters
Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan dealt another blow to Sweden’s NATO bid, hinting that his government could approve Finland’s application for NATO membership without its Nordic neighbor.
Finland and Sweden both formally applied to join the 73-year-old defense alliance last May, reversing their long-standing non-alignment policy in the wake of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The two have promised to take their steps forward at the same time.
Erdoğan, angry at Sweden’s government for several reasons, is poised to make or break both countries’ NATO accession plans, as each state’s application requires unanimous approval from all 30 current members. Hungary is the only country apart from Turkey that has not yet approved the Nordic countries’ bid, which the rest of the member states want to speed up.
“We can give Finland a different message [on their application], and Sweden would be shocked when they see our message. But Finland should not make the same mistake as Sweden did,” Erdogan said during a speech on Sunday.
The comments will come days later Erdogan threatened Sweden’s NATO membership over a Koran burning led by right-wing extremists that took place in front of the Turkish embassy in Stockholm, something Swedish authorities condemned but said was legal under the country’s freedom of expression laws.
“Those who allow such blasphemy in front of our embassy can no longer expect our support for their NATO membership,” Erdogan said on January 23.
Sweden’s Foreign Minister Ann Linde and Finland’s Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto attend a press conference with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, after signing their countries’ accession protocol at the alliance’s headquarters in Brussels, Belgium on July 5, 2022.
Yves Herman | Reuters
Turkey’s enmity towards Sweden is mainly about Sweden’s support for Kurdish groups that Ankara considers to be terrorists or affiliated with militants, and on the arms embargo that both Sweden and Finland, along with other EU countries, are placing on Turkey for its targeting of Kurdish militias in Syria.
Finland lifted its nearly three-year arms embargo on Turkey just last week as part of its effort to improve relations between the two countries and move one step closer to winning its NATO bid.
But the relationship between Stockholm and Ankara currently shows no signs of improving.
Things got so heated after the Koran burning episode in the Swedish capital and an anti-Erdogan protest by Kurdish activists there just days before that Finland’s foreign minister called for a “time-out” in the talks with Turkey over the Nordic states’ accession to NATO.
“A time-out is needed before we return to the three-way talks and see where we are when the dust settles after the current situation, so no conclusions should be drawn yet… I think there will be a break for a couple of weeks,” says Pekka Haavisto told Reuters in an interview published on January 24.
Sweden’s leadership has plainly said that they will not be able to meet all of Turkey’s demands. At the same time, Turkey has presented it with a kind of deadline.
“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,” Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said in early January. Still, he expressed confidence that Turkey would approve his country’s NATO bid.
Turkish presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin recently said Sweden has eight to 10 weeks to make the changes Ankara is demanding because Turkey’s parliament could go into recess before the country’s crucial May 14 presidential election. Sweden says it needs six more months to make these changes.
Finland has not yet commented on how the potential for its NATO accession without its neighbor and close ally Sweden might affect its plans to join the alliance.