Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Monday (10) that he would pave the way for Sweden’s accession to NATO (Western military alliance) if the EU (European Union) accepts his country as a member.
“I call on those countries that have made Turkey wait at the door of the European Union for more than 50 years. First, come and pave the way for Turkey in the EU and then we will pave the way for Sweden, just as we did for Finland,” he said. told reporters before leaving for the NATO summit in Vilinus (Lithuania).
He said he will take the surprising message to the meeting that will take place on Tuesday (11) and Wednesday (12). It is a rock horse in the Turkish tactic so far, which aimed to pressure the Nordic country to frame and extradite dissidents opposed to Erdogan exiled there.
In addition, the president seeks to regain access to American military material, in this case F-16 fighters. Ankara and Washington have been at odds since Erdogan bought Russia’s S-400 anti-aircraft systems, something the Americans saw as threatening the secrets of their latest fighter, the F-35, which the Turks helped produce and would operate.
As a result, then-President Donald Trump, already criticized by Erdogan after rejecting the extradition of the cleric to whom a military coup against Turkey in 2016 was attributed, ordered Ankara to be cut off from the F-35 consortium. Turkey has a robust fleet of 252 F-16s, but most are becoming obsolete and in need of replacement.
On Sunday (9), Erdogan spoke about this with the American Joe Biden, and denied conditioning support for the Swedes’ entry into NATO to the F-16. Now, he has drawn this new letter, which should displease several members of the European Union – the European political and economic club has 27 members, 22 of which are also NATO members.
Erdogan spoke of a 50-year wait, but in reality negotiations began in 2005, when he was already prime minister. France has always been a vocal opponent of the measure, for reasons that Turks consider xenophobic: Paris is dealing with a crisis in its Muslim immigrant communities, Turkey’s predominant religion.
To add to the bitterness, after the 2016 coup, the EU criticized internal repression in Turkey, a country that has flirted with the concept of illiberal democracy for years. And France has established a military partnership to arm Greece, Ankara’s historic rival, despite both being part of NATO.
In recent years, however, the relationship has improved precisely due to agreements aimed at restricting illegal immigration through Turkish territory.
Ankara’s position is unique. Erdogan is the NATO leader closest to Vladimir Putin, and on Saturday (8) said he would welcome him to his country. On the other hand, he supports Ukraine in the ongoing war, and that same day he broke an agreement with Moscow and returned to Kiev commanders of the neo-Nazi Azov group, who had been exiled to Turkey after being defeated in Mariupol last year.
The introduction of the EU item on Erdogan’s list adds difficulties for Sweden. The Scandinavian country abandoned 200 years of neutrality last year when it applied to join NATO alongside neighboring Finland, which in turn abandoned seven decades of military non-alignment.
Both countries have been members of the EU since 1995 and decided that Russia’s aggression against Ukraine put them in line at the Kremlin. They applied for membership together and all the then 30 countries in the alliance, minus Turkey and its illiberal ally Hungary, ratified the movement in their parliaments. Without unanimity, there is no entry into the club.
In the end, Turks and Hungarians admitted Helsinki in April, in a defeat for Putin, who saw his border with NATO double in a stroke of the pen. Now both Turks and Hungarians play together to delay Stockholm life.
NATO’s reaction was as possible. The secretary general, the Norwegian Jens Stoltenberg, rushed to the microphones to say that he supports the Turkish bid to join the EU. And he said “we are working hard” to ensure that Sweden is admitted, which he intended to see happen at this summit.
More meetings are planned for this Monday in the Lithuanian capital, a baroque jewel turned into a military base, with armored vehicles in the streets, a thousand NATO soldiers as reinforcements and American Patriot anti-aircraft batteries, operated by Germans, lined up next to the runway of its international airport. The city is 30 km from Putin’s ally Belarus, and the country is bordered to the south by the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad.
The Swedish issue is one of the thorny points at the summit, which is expected to deal among other things with the NATO-China relationship, more weapons for Kiev amid the difficult ongoing counter-offensive, the eventual nuclearization of Poland and the strengthening of the alliance’s eastern flank.
