Erdogan suggests that Turkey could accept Finland into NATO without Sweden
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan will arrive at the NATO summit in Madrid, Spain on June 29, 2022.
Nacho Doce | Reuters
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan dealt another blow to Sweden’s NATO bid, suggesting that his government could accept Finland’s NATO membership application without the Nordic neighbor.
Finland and Sweden officially applied to join the 73-year-old defense alliance in May last year, reversing their long-standing policy of non-alignment in the wake of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The two have vowed to take steps forward side by side.
Erdoğan, angry with the Swedish government for several reasons, is poised to make or break both countries’ plans to join NATO, as each nation’s application requires unanimous approval from all 30 current members. Apart from Turkey, Hungary is the only country that has not yet accepted the Nordic offers, which the other member countries want to speed up.
“We get to convey a different message to Finland [on their application], and Sweden would be shocked to see our message. But Finland should not make the same mistake that Sweden did,” Erdogan said in his speech on Sunday.
The comments will come days later Erdogan threatened Sweden’s NATO membership because of the Koran burning a far-right-led event in front of the Turkish embassy in Stockholm, which Swedish authorities condemned but said was legal under the country’s freedom of speech 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.
Swedish Foreign Minister Ann Linde and Finnish Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto participate in a press conference with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg after signing their countries’ accession protocols at the alliance’s headquarters in Brussels, Belgium on July 5, 2022.
Yves Herman | Reuters
Turkey’s hostility towards Sweden is mainly concentrated Sweden’s support for Kurdish groups that Ankara considers terrorists or linked to militants, as well as the arms embargo that both Sweden and Finland, along with other EU countries, imposed on Turkey for its targeting of Kurdish forces in Syria.
Last week, Finland lifted the nearly three-year arms embargo against Turkey as part of its efforts to improve relations between the two countries and get one step closer to its NATO aspirations.
But the relationship between Stockholm and Ankara currently shows no signs of improvement.
Things escalated after a Koran-burning episode in the Swedish capital and an anti-Erdogan protest by Kurdish activists just days before. Finland’s foreign minister demanded a “time-out” in negotiations with Turkey The Nordic countries joining NATO.
“We need a time-out before we go back to the three-way talks and see where we are when the dust has settled after the current situation, so no conclusions should be drawn yet… I think there will be a break here for a couple of weeks,” Pekka Haavisto told Reuters in an interview published on January 24 .
The Swedish management has frankly said that it cannot meet all of Turkey’s demands. At the same time, Turkey has presented a kind of deadline for it.
“Turkey confirms that we have done what we promised to do, but they also say they want things that we cannot or do not want to give them,” Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said in early January. However, he expressed his confidence that Turkey will accept his country’s NATO application.
Turkish presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin recently said Sweden has eight to 10 weeks to make the changes Ankara is demanding because Turkey’s parliament may be in recess before the country’s crucial May 14 presidential election. Sweden says it needs six more months to make the changes.
Finland has not yet commented on how its chances of joining NATO without its neighbor and close ally Sweden could affect its plans to join the alliance.