Sweden’s bid to join NATO meets continued resistance from Turkey
May 18, 2022, was a big day for Sweden. After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and more than 200 years of non-military alignment, the Nordic country finally broke with tradition and applied for NATO membership along with Finland.
But what was supposed to be an easy accession has proven to be anything but a smooth sail. NATO member Turkey has a problem with Sweden, and its patience is wearing thin – with both the country’s humour and its freedom of expression principles.
The ink had barely dried on Finland and Sweden’s joint application letter before Turkey started conditioning their aspiring NATO memberships, saying they posed a threat to its national security and they needed to take more concrete steps if they ever wanted its blessing to join the military alliance.
“Neither country has an open, clear stance against terrorist organisations,” President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said just hours after the application was filed, accusing them of acting as safe havens for Kurdish militant groups such as the banned Kurdistan Workers' Party, PKK. He also demanded they lift an arms export ban imposed on Turkey in 2019 after it launched an offensive in northern Syria targeting the YPG, the Kurdish militia fighting the Islamic State group there.
After signing a memorandum of understanding on the sidelines of a NATO summit in June – in which both Finland and Sweden in broad brushstrokes agreed to address Turkey’s concerns surrounding arms exports and its fight against terrorism – Ankara suddenly started getting very specific in its demands.
At first, it issued a long list of “terrorists”, or alleged Kurdish militants, that it insisted the two countries extradite – despite many of them having been granted asylum by the Nordic countries years, or even decades, earlier.
But Turkey’s demands soon grew in numbers, and began focusing more and more on Sweden: Ankara called for a Swedish minister to be fired over his attendance at a pro-PKK party 10 years ago, and went as far as to summon the Swedish ambassador over a TV show poking fun at Erdogan.
Last week, Turkey piled on the pressure even further by calling on Sweden to investigate a Stockholm rally staged by a group it said was sympathetic to the PKK, and during which antiErdogan slogans had allegedly been made. It also demanded Sweden identify those who had taken part in the protest – a move which stands in stark contrast to the country’s highly valued freedom of expression principles.
Ankara’s growing lists of demands has caught Sweden between a rock and a hard place since its NATO application pretty much stands and falls with Turkey’s approval – any enlargement of the alliance must be ratified by all of its 30 members. Although Hungary remains the only other NATO member that has yet to greenlight Sweden’s (and Finland’s) membership, its Prime Minister Viktor Orban has said its parliament is expected to do so in the beginning of next year.
The overhanging threat posed by Russia has left the tiny nation of 10 million scrambling to live up to Turkey’s tough asks – as far as its democratic values and laws will allow. In September Sweden lifted the arms export ban to Turkey, and in August it agreed to hand over a man whose name featured on Turkey’s “terrorist” list.