Turkish President approves Sweden’s bid to join NATO

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan signed the protocol on Sweden’s accession to NATO and sent it for consideration to the Turkish Grand National Assembly (parliament), the Turkish head of state reported on his page X (formerly Twitter). Erdogan’s proposal, according to Turkish law, will first be considered by the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Parliament. The voting date is not yet known.

At the same time, Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson on his social network page welcomed the decision of the Turkish president, saying that he was looking forward to the start of parliamentary procedures in Turkey and his country’s early accession to NATO.

Alliance Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg made a similar statement. According to the Swedish government, Stoltenberg also previously sent a letter to all alliance states in which he stated that the Scandinavian state should become a member of the organization no later than the meeting of NATO foreign ministers scheduled for November 28-29, Bloomberg reported on October 24.

Sweden and Finland applied to join NATO in May last year. The latter became a member of the organization in April 2023, and the accession of Stockholm was blocked by Turkey and Hungary all this time. Subsequently, the Hungarian authorities stated that they would approve the expansion of the military bloc after the Turkish veto was lifted.

Ankara has repeatedly accused Swedish authorities of being lenient towards members of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK, banned in Turkey) and of harboring Turkish citizens allegedly involved in the failed 2016 military coup in Turkey. The Turkish leadership was also outraged by a series of anti-Islamic protests in Stockholm with the burning of the Koran. In July, Sweden tightened its anti-terrorism legislation and agreed to cooperate more closely with the Turkish side on security issues.

At the NATO summit in Vilnius on July 11, Erdogan agreed to lift the ban on Sweden’s admission to the alliance after Stockholm agreed to support Turkey’s entry into the European Union, which it has been trying to join since 2004. The Turkish leader promised to take the issue to parliament immediately after the summer holidays at the beginning of October, but it was repeatedly postponed under the pretext that Stockholm had not yet taken concrete steps to curb the activities of the PKK.

Another condition of Erdogan for Sweden’s admission to NATO was the approval by the US Congress of the sale of 40 new F-16 fighters and kits for modernizing 79 such machines already available in the Turkish Air Force. Ankara first requested the purchase of these aircraft in 2021. But after Turkey was excluded from the American program for the supply of fifth-generation F-35 fighters due to Turkey’s purchase of Russian S-400 anti-aircraft missile systems, the US Congress, under various pretexts, prevented the transfer of the machines.

Despite the escalation of violence in the Middle East, in which Turkey rhetorically supports the Palestinians, and the West supports Israel, the Turkish authorities will in any case ratify the document on Sweden’s admission to NATO and will not put forward additional conditions, believes Associate Professor of the Department of Theory of Regional Studies at Moscow State Linguistic University Iqbal Durre. According to him, a demarche by Turkish deputies is also unlikely: the majority of seats in parliament are occupied by members of the pro-government coalition (318 seats out of 600), and representatives of the opposition traditionally advocate the expansion of NATO and the normalization of the country’s relations with Western countries.

The Turkish parliament previously banned the deployment of American troops in the country before the 2003 US coalition invasion of Iraq, but Turkish authorities subsequently regretted their decision, Durre recalls. “The Americans carried out a military operation anyway, and Ankara remained on the sidelines of the post-war development of Iraq. After the war, the Iraqi Kurds acquired political subjectivity and status, which the Turkish authorities did not like,” says the expert.

According to him, many in Turkey believe that if the parliament had voted differently, the country would not have allowed the formation of Kurdish autonomy. For this reason, Durre continues, the authorities fear that if they delay regarding Sweden’s membership in NATO, Washington will be able to create problems for Turkish interests in Syria, on the Russian-Turkish track, in relations between Turkey and Greece, or will slow down the process of modernization of the Turkish Air Force . “Ankara does not intend to go too far. A temporary confrontation with the West is not a goal, but only a lever of political pressure to bargain for benefits. The accession of Stockholm to NATO is neither hot nor cold for the Turks,” the expert explained.

Director General of the International Institute for the Development of Scientific Cooperation Arif Asalyoglu agrees with Durre. According to the expert, against the backdrop of the ongoing economic crisis in Turkey, Ankara is interested in normalizing relations with the European Union and the United States in order to also receive loans to solve internal problems. The process of ratifying the document on Sweden’s admission to NATO will take about a month, the expert believes. At the same time, having lifted their veto, the authorities expect to speed up the procedure for the sale of American fighters to the Turkish Air Force, Asalioglu sums up.