The strong card of unanimity is what Recep Tayyip Erdogan is currently exploiting in NATO by directly threatening to veto the membership of Sweden and Finland in the North Atlantic alliance.
What if analysts have repeatedly pointed out that Turkey's stance is adventurist, what if Bloomberg said in an opinion piece signed by the news agency's editors that even the possibility of expelling Turkey, which is threatening the general good of the alliance with its stance in order to reap benefits, should be considered? What is certain at this stage is that taking for granted that the accession of countries to NATO must come after a unanimous decision by all members, it does not leave much room for the Alliance to ignore the eastern bargain that Ankara is trying to set up.
The accession of Sweden and Finland to NATO would strengthen the alliance's defenses in the northeast and mark the biggest change in Europe's security landscape to occur since Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Against this backdrop, Bloomberg's analysis attempts to shed light on the red flags for Turkey and why, absurd as it may sound, it calls Sweden and Finland "terrorist havens."
1. Why do the Kurds matter to Turkey?
The Kurds are a people, with a population of about 30 million, and one of the largest ethnic groups in the world without a state of their own at the moment. Their ancestral homelands are divided between Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran. The Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, has been fighting Turkish forces since the mid-1980s as it has sought an autonomous region for the Kurds within Turkey. Turkey is currently particularly focused on the People's Protection Units, or YPG, a Kurdish militia in Syria that helped defeat Islamic State there. Thus, by fighting the Kurds there, Turkey hopes that they will not be the spark that ignites the "fire" in the region by further agitating the Kurds inside Turkey.
2. What is Sweden's policy on the Kurds?
Sweden has long had policies in favour of respecting minorities both at home and abroad using rhetoric to that effect. This has resulted in the country currently hosting up to 100,000 Kurds. Indeed, in the same context, as other EU states are doing, it has open contacts with certain Kurdish political groups. However, no matter how much Erdogan tries to convince otherwise, Sweden was the first country after Turkey to designate the PKK as a terrorist organisation in 1984!
3. So what is Erdogan's problem with Sweden?
Turkey has criticized Swedish officials for meetings with Kurdish politicians, citing a meeting between Foreign Minister Anne Linde and Elham Ahmad, who represents the PYD, the political wing of the YPG (in Syria). When Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson was elected in 2021, it was in part thanks to the support of a Kurdish MP, Amineh Kakabaveh, Bloomberg reports. Her support was secured in exchange for a pledge to increase cooperation between Andersson's Social Democrats and the PYD. Another focus of tension on Turkey's part is the Syrian Democratic Council, the political arm of a Kurdish-dominated group of forces in northern Syria. Turkey says this group is dominated by terrorists. Sweden, on the other hand, says it cooperates with the SDC, but not with the YPG or the PKK.
4. What is Erdogan demanding?
Ankara has called on Sweden to extradite suspects wanted by Turkey on terrorism charges, something the Turks say Sweden has so far refused to do. In this context, Turkey wants Sweden and Finland to publicly denounce the PKK and its affiliates. According to Turkish officials who spoke to Bloomberg on condition of anonymity, Turkey is also demanding an end to the arms export restrictions that Sweden and Finland imposed on Turkey in late 2019 in conjunction with several other EU countries following the deployment of its military in Syria.
5. Will Sweden "comply"?
Sweden is holding a general election in September and any move that could be interpreted as submitting to Erdogan may not be popular with voters. Anderson's government is likely to resist being dragged into negotiations over its extradition policy, for example, or its arms exports. Instead, Sweden's diplomats are likely to try to recruit allies to pressure Turkey not to block Sweden's entry into NATO.
6. How does Finland fit in here?
It seems to have been caught in the crossfire. The country has no significant Kurdish minority, with only about 15,000 Kurdish speakers living in the country. Finnish policymakers say the country complies with EU terrorism designations, meaning it has also banned the PKK. Finland, like Sweden, ended arms exports to Turkey in 2019, but trade has been small. Finnish Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto called Turkey's stance a test "if there is a NATO open-door policy" and noted that "anti-democratic practices such as repression, blackmail" do not fit into "an alliance of democratic countries."
The road to membership
All of this, however, are exercises on paper as Ankara may insist, respectively, but NATO members are expected to insist as the days pass, thus composing a landscape that Bloomberg describes as a "hellish courtyard" in which Ankara walks.
Besides, Turkish officials point out that designating the PKK as a terrorist organization is not enough: the Scandinavian applicants must do more to suppress the PKK supporters Ankara says are active in their countries.
Turkey also wants Sweden and Finland to end arms export restrictions imposed on Turkey, along with several other European Union members, after its invasion of Syria in 2019 to push the YPG back from the border, the officials said.
Indeed, while Turkey's arms trade with the two countries is negligible and it does not seek significant defense deals with them, NATO officials note that in principle Ankara will not accept the expansion of a military alliance to countries that block arms deals.
This, international analysts point out, will be because it is a common assumption that as time goes on it is to the detriment of both the Alliance and Sweden and Finland in particular not to be NATO territories. Besides, Vladimir Putin and Russian officials have publicly expressed their objection to the possibility of these two countries joining NATO, and considering Russia's straightening relations with the West, a scenario of a challenge on the northwestern border cannot be ruled out.
Thus, Ankara is once again playing a dangerous card, as Bloomberg has pointed out in recent days that Turkey is basically trying to get the sanctions against it lifted which it caused by making the deal with Moscow for the Russian S-400.
Source: protothema.gr
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