The tense and protracted NATO negotiations between Sweden and Turkey gave the impression of giving way this week after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Ankara would not help Stockholm’s membership.
Only Hungary and Turkey have yet to approve the dual accession of Finland and Sweden through parliamentary votes. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said his legislature would vote in February. He is expected to ratify the decision. But Turkey is in a position to resist. Historic expansion of NATO indefinitely.
“You won’t see anything from us on the NATO issue,” Erdogan said earlier this week, following anti-Islam protests organized by Swedish far-right teams in Stockholm.
Protests outside the Turkish embassy included the burning of a Koran by a far-right Danish politician, sparking fury in Turkey and the Muslim world.
Other protesters marched through Stockholm waving the flags of Kurdish terrorist paramilitary groups through Ankara, some trampling photographs of Erdogan’s face.
The Turkish president said after the protests: “Then they will let terrorist organizations go crazy in their avenues and streets and then wait for us to enter NATO. That’s not the case. “
Finnish Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto warned this week that negotiators should take a “time off,” while Turkey canceled the trilateral mechanism set up to facilitate talks, which could leave NATO expansion stuck in limbo until 2023.
There is already a hypothesis that Erdogan needed to hold the club vote before Turkey’s presidential and parliamentary elections in May. The president hopes to win a third term, but the country faces serious economic challenges and opinion polls recommend the race will be close.
Turkey’s former representative to NATO, Fatih Ceylon, told Newsweek that the bilateral agreement with Stockholm had been “toxic” in the wake of the protest against the burning of the Koran.
Ceylon, now chairman of the Ankara Policy Center think tank, said: “This provocation has been seriously criticized in almost every circle in Turkey. Now we have a genuine complication. “
Erdogan’s cancellation of the trilateral talks is “unfortunate,” he added. “Finland is a challenge in Turkey. But now we have the riddle of Sweden’s accession. “
In Sweden, the feeling is one of “disappointment,” Mats Engström, senior policy researcher at the European Council on Foreign Relations, told Newsweek. “When the NATO application procedure started, other people thought it would be a fairly simple procedure. There were other people who warned about Turkey, but they were very few. “
Swedish governments have caved in to many of Erdogan’s demands. These come with strengthening anti-terrorism legislation by monitoring Kurdish teams and extradition requests for activists and Americans linked to Fethullah Gülen, the U. S. -based cleric. U. S. Accused across Ankara of orchestrating a failed coup in 2016.
Last month, Sweden’s supreme court rejected an extradition request for journalist Bülent Keneş, angering Turkey, which says he is one of the coup plotters.
“Turkey confirms that we have done what we said we would do, but they also say they need things that we or we don’t need to give them,” Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said earlier this month. The extradition issues, he added, were “dealt with within the framework of Swedish law. “
Erdogan’s obvious withdrawal is a blow to Stockholm after months of compromise, Engström said.
“This creates frustration in Sweden among politicians who were most active and advocating for membership, but also among the general public, who feel that they don’t need to be humiliated through Erdogan in a safe way, and who feel that some of the statements we had to make that were borderline on what was already acceptable. ” Said.
Elections in Turkey will mean that any club votes will be postponed until the summer.
“My prediction is that this accession procedure has almost been completed before the presidential and general elections,” Ceylon said. It will have the results of the Turkish vote.
“Each party, adding the two in power, will try to consolidate its grassroots support,” Ceylon said. “This factor will also be exploited. There’s no doubt about it. . . The number of insecure voters in Turkey is high. . Therefore, every match tries to get attention. They want the votes. “
Viktorija Starych-Samuolienė, co-founder of the London-based Council on Geostrategy think tank, told Newsweek that it was difficult to expect the impact of the Turkish elections.
Turkey’s six-party opposition coalition has yet to decide which candidate it hopes will topple Erdogan. “The scenario is complicated even if they win,” Starych-Samuolienė said. We don’t know exactly what to expect.
“Keep in mind that this formula that Erdogan created has been in position for two decades. It may be that, in fact, there are no significant adjustments or adjustments with respect to foreign policy and all those debates. “
Counterterrorism and national security have been “key issues that have prevailed over the years” in Erdogan’s government and his Justice and Development Party, Starych-Samuolienė said. The president can be expected to rely on his militant anti-Kurdish credentials, which have been bolstered through his talks with Stockholm and Helsinki.
The Stockholm protests also create an internal political conundrum for Kristersson and his Moderate Party. The prime minister blamed the burning of the Koran, through Rasmus Paludan, the leader of a Danish far-right party, and allegedly organized through Russia-aligned journalist Chang Frick. – on “provocateurs” to torpedo NATO expansion.
But Jimmie Akesson, leader of the far-right Sweden Democrats party, spouse of a minority in Kristersson’s ruling coalition, called Erdogan an “Islamist dictator. “formula and a dictator we are dealing with. “
The face of NATO
Finnish-Swedish accession was intended to be easy. The June 2022 NATO summit, held in Madrid, was intended to be an official birthday party of the alliance’s expansion and a business rebuke of the Kremlin’s aggression in Ukraine.
“If I was sitting in Moscow as a foreign policy or security official, I would have been happy,” Ceylon said. “We deserve not to be able to fall into the hands of those who oppose Sweden and Finland joining NATO. “
Other NATO allies, namely the United States, have tried to bring the talks to a successful conclusion. But Washington has also tried to link its unrest with Turkey, which largely revolves around army purchases, to negotiations.
Turkey hopes to secure a $20 billion deal for 40 U. S. -made F-16 fighter jets. U. S. and upgrade kits. It is also still in talks with the US. U. S. S. S. Fighter Program on its withdrawal from the F-35 fighter jet program in 2019; in retaliation for Ankara’s acquisition of Russian S-400 anti-aircraft systems.
“Behind the scenes, talks [on membership] are taking place” between U. S. and Turkish representatives, according to Starych-Samuolienė.
Ceylon said the U. S. Congress was not in the process of being in the U. S. Congress. The U. S. and White House can also wait for the final results of the Turkish election before reaching an agreement on the F-16. “They’re looking not to combine the two,” he said. But in practice, I think it’s a safe point of connection. “
“There will be steps by allied countries, including but not limited to the United States, to verify this factor as soon as possible,” Ceylon said. “But I’m not sure it will produce the desired result. “results. “
He added: “The longer this procedure takes, the more complicated it will be. “
Meanwhile, the dangers of stagnation are slipping out of Erdogan’s hands. “The more visual this factor is, the more likely it is to be used as a detail of domestic politics,” Ceylon said.
Engström said Sweden’s view was similar. “Erdogan would possibly have started anything that was partly because of his electoral success, but now he has sparked protests and other parties in Turkey as well,” he said.
“I think it’s true that it can also have long-term effects. Some other people think that just the elections and everything would be fine. But it can be harder than that. “
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