Turkey Agrees to Support Sweden’s NATO Bid, Clearing Main Obstacle
Category: News & Politics
Via: hallux • last year • 12 commentsBy: Ben Hubbard, Lara Jakes and Steven Erlanger - NYT
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Turkey agreed on Monday to clear the way for Sweden to join NATO, a sudden reversal just hours after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that the European Union should first advance Turkey’s bid to join the E.U. bloc.
NATO’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, announced Turkey’s decision from Vilnius, Lithuania, where the alliance was preparing to open its annual summit on Tuesday.
Mr. Stoltenberg said that Mr. Erdogan had lifted his objections to Sweden’s entry into the alliance and would take the country’s bid to his Parliament for ratification as soon as possible.
In return, Sweden and Turkey would continue to work bilaterally against terrorism, Sweden would help reinvigorate Turkey’s application to enter the European Union, and NATO would establish a new “special coordinator for counterterrorism,” he said.
“This is good for all of us,” Mr. Stoltenberg said. “This is good for Sweden — Sweden will become a full member — and it’s good for Turkey because Turkey is a NATO ally that will benefit from a stronger NATO.”
The NATO statement said Mr. Erdogan met on Monday with Mr. Stoltenberg and Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson of Sweden to discuss the country’s bid, which had been held up by Turkey’s demands that Sweden crack down on dissidents whom Turkey considers terrorists, including pro-Kurdish activists and members of a religious group that Turkey has accused of planning a coup attempt in 2016.
Hungary is the only other NATO member that has yet to approve Sweden’s bid, but Hungarian officials have said that if Turkey’s position changes, they would not obstruct the process.
Mr. Erdogan’s demand on E.U. membership — a day before the opening of NATO’s two-day summit — appeared to have erected a new obstacle to the admission of Sweden, a major manufacturer of artillery, airplanes and other arms with crucial geographic value allowing control the airspace over the Baltic Sea.
“First, clear the way for Turkey in the European Union, then we will clear the way for Sweden as we did for Finland,” Mr. Erdogan told reporters before traveling to the summit.
Sweden, like Finland, had been moved to apply for NATO membership last year by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. At a NATO summit in Madrid last year, officials from Turkey, Sweden and Finland outlined steps that would secure Turkey’s support — a crucial requirement, because all NATO nations must agree to admit new members.
Finland overcame Turkey’s initial objections and joined the alliance in April .
In recent months, Sweden made efforts to meet Turkey’s demands, amending its Constitution, passing new counterterrorism legislation and agreeing to extradite several Turks who stand accused of crimes in Turkey. But Swedish courts have blocked other extraditions, and Swedish officials have said that they cannot override their country’s free-speech protections.
Mr. Erdogan continued to say that Sweden must do more.
A new complication arose late last month, after a man publicly burned a Quran at a protest in Stockholm on a major Muslim holiday Mr. Erdogan criticized Sweden for permitting the protest and said that the Swedish authorities needed to fight Islamophobia, even though that had not been among the issues Sweden had agreed with Turkey to address.
On Sunday, President Biden spoke with Mr. Erdogan and told him of “his desire to welcome Sweden into NATO as soon as possible,” according to a terse account of the call provided by the White House .
While NATO is a military alliance with 31 members, including the United States and Canada, the E.U. is an economic and political union with 27 members.
Turkey applied to join the European Union in 1987, but there has been scarcely any progress in its bid since 2016, when the European Parliament voted to suspend accession talks while criticizing a vast Turkish government crackdown on political opponents after a failed coup against Mr. Erdogan.
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LET'S GO BRANDON!
Excellent, Erdogan must really want the F 18 upgrades.
He wanted to be in the EU ... I expect there's a goodie or two in the Party Bag.
He also freed some Ukrainian POWs that really pissed off Putin over the weekend.
Both of these decisions are complete 180s of what they were just a couple of months ago.
Or the F-35's.
IMO, as long as he has the Russia air defense system he will never see the F 35, Doc.
There's no telling what promises Joe made to get Erdogan to back off on Sweden's admission to NATO.
Since Turkey has been trying for years to get accepted into the EU it seems that Sweden and other EU countries will support Turkey's bid for membership...The US will now upgrade Turkey's F 16s. Now what do you think Turkey did to get that far. First, the release of the Azov Ukrainian commanders back to Ukraine highly pissed off the Russians. Turkey is now supporting Ukraine's NATO bid. Turkey stopped four Russian warships from transiting Turkey's waterway.
The US has been putting a lot of pressure on Turkey/Edrogon to change and support Sweden in its NATO bid. Getting Sweden into NATO was an outstanding move. Sweden is a wealthy country with a first-class military very modern and has been training with NATO for years. Their military was built for one thing and one thing only, to fight Russia. Additionally adding Sweden to NATO makes the Baltic Sea a NATO lake locking in the Russians who have to use the Baltic Sea for much of their transportation, both international and domestic. Sweden also develops and builds its own fighter jets considered some of the best in the world and also builds the CV90 IFV also considered one of the best in the world and 50 of which just arrived in Ukraine gifted from Sweden.
The addition of Finland and Sweden to NATO is a huge leg up on the Russians.
Yep.
17+ minutes long.
So the US, Sweden, and EU finally sweetened the deal enough for Turkey to step aside.
Wonder how much this will cost US taxpayers?
I dunno, how much does angst run per pound down there?