2023-12-28 13:42:27
MONDE – The Foreign Affairs Committee of the Turkish Parliament approved on Tuesday December 26, 2023 the text authorizing Sweden’s accession to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Istanbul, the only member of the alliance to use its veto to block the road to Sweden, ended up giving up after 19 months of negotiations, during which President Recep Tayyip Erdogan increased the conditions. Turkey’s accession to the European Union, withdrawal of Swedish support for the Kurds or even the delivery repeatedly blocked by Washington of its F-16 fighter planes: the justifications varied depending on the international context and Erdogan’s political agenda. . Stockholm’s accession must still be definitively adopted by a Plenary Assembly, the date of which has still not been specified…
Entry into NATO is only obtained after unanimous agreement of all its members. Sweden and Finland applied a few months after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but Helsinki, which broke a long-standing military non-alignment, was admitted in April 2023. What about Stockholm? Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan promised last November that it was no longer just a matter of “formality” whose outcome was to become clearer “a few weeks” later.
Pressure on the Kurds
In the meantime, Turkey has been intractable, each time stating a new condition. During the first months of the accession process, Erdogan constantly denounced the “support” from Stockholm to Kurdish groups and their party (PKK), considered terrorist by Ankara. The Turkish president openly claimed and “tightening of policy” from Sweden and Finland “with regard to their Kurdish immigration”. Sweden’s concessions, such as the expulsion of suspected PKK members or the adoption of a new anti-terrorism lawwere probably not sufficient.
Last July, Erdogan demanded, this time, Turkey’s accession to the European Union to unblock the process of Sweden’s entry into NATO. “First pave the way for Turkey to join the European Union and then we will pave the way for Sweden, just as we paved the way for Finland”he declared on the eve of the opening of the annual NATO summit in Vilnius.
Ankara submitted its application in 1987 to the European Economic Community then in 1999 to the EU but the accession process was considered at the end of 2022 to be “at a standstill”. “Almost all NATO members are members of the EU. I am addressing these countries which have kept Turkey waiting for more than 50 years”, he added from Lithuania. A statement which surprised many European leaders, who did not fail to point out that the two files were in no way linked.
The list of conditions grew further in December, when Ankara demanded the unblocking of the United States’ sale of F-16 fighter jets to Turkey, which must modernize its air force. If the White House is not unfavorable to this delivery, Congress is opposed to such an operation for political reasons, such as Greek-Turkish tensions or Erdogan’s declarations of support for Hamas. In response to the Turkish president, the American Senate conditioned this sale on the accession of Stockholm and Helsinki to NATO.
No Sweden in NATO without F-16s in Turkey?
Ankara is thus banking on its particular status as a crossroads of Europe, Asia and the Middle East and its close relations with Washington to set its demands. It is from Turkey that the United States can project itself into the Middle East, through the military bases made available to them thanks to the DECA (Defense Economics Cooperation Agreement), sign in 1980.
But a telephone conversation in mid-December between American President Joe Biden and his Turkish counterpart seems to have helped to overcome the latter’s reluctance. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg “greeted” the approval by the parliamentary committee of the text which “will make NATO stronger”. Swedish Foreign Minister Tobias Billström told a Swedish television station: “We look forward to becoming a member of NATO”.
Fuat Oktay, an MP from Turkey’s ruling party (AKP), explained this first step by “change in Swedish politics” as well as by “some decisions adopted by the courts”. “We still had some requests for additional progress” in terms of the fight against terrorism, he said.
The Foreign Affairs Committee of the Turkish Parliament transmitted the approved text to the Plenary Assembly for final adoption, intended to formalize Stockholm’s accession to NATO. For an observer, the two processes, i.e. Sweden’s entry into the alliance and the delivery of F-16s, “will move forward in parallel. This is all linked”.
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