Erdogan blocks Nordic Nato hopes
First it was dissident Turkish journalists gaining asylum in Sweden; next it was demonstrations at which flags of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party had flown; and then there was a Quran-burning protest in Stockholm.
Eight months since Sweden and Finland announced plans to join Nato, Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, keeps coming up with new reasons to delay their accession.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine prompted the Nordic countries to cast aside long-standing nonalignment policies to announce last May their desire to join the defence alliance.
But they did not count on the divergent agenda of Turkey’s president: projecting a strong image in a critical election year — and Erdogan wields an effective veto.
He has zeroed in on Sweden in particular, accusing authorities there of allowing “terror organisations [to] run wild on your avenues and streets” and saying Stockholm must show greater respect for Turkey or “they won’t see any support from us on the Nato issue”.
Last month, Turkey even said it could approve Finland’s Nato membership application ahead of Sweden’s, an idea rejected by Helsinki. For the exiled Turkish journalist, Bulent Kenes, this sort of fiery rhetoric is all too predictable — and designed with one thing in mind. “Turkey is approaching a critical election, Erdogan needs to show himself a strongman,” Kenes said from his home in Stockholm.
“He is taking any opportunity to increase his power in the eyes of his domestic audience. He has found a very manageable enemy to show Sweden as an adversary of Turkey.”
Whatever Erodgan’s motivations, his words have left the governments of Sweden and Finland scrambling to salvage the situation.
“Erdogan is demonstrating that he’s a force to be reckoned with in a multipolar world in which the US and EU is no longer dominant,” said Paul Levin of the Institute for Turkish Studies at Stockholm University.
Turkey felt humiliated by its experience of applying for EU membership a decade ago, Levin said. “Now the roles are reversed and Sweden and Finland are asking Turkey if they would be so kind as to let them in, so there’s a reverse power dynamic.”