The NATO member state, Turkeyhas received a series of concessions and promises from candidate Sweden in order to lift its long-standing opposition to Stockholm joining the Alliance, first submitted more than a year ago in July 2022.
Both Sweden and Finland, ostensibly neutral but Western-aligned states, were prompted to apply for NATO membership last June after Russia’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine amid concerns in the Nordic and Baltic states about further aggression from Moscow. In April this year Finland officially joined NATO as 31St member.
However, NATO member Turkey and Hungary opposed, for both aligned and separate reasons, Sweden’s entry into the Alliance. Both Turkey and Hungary have strong ties to Russia, with all three countries led by populist strongmen.
Turkey in particular wanted to extract favorable terms for Sweden’s NATO membership, a clear game of realpolitik played by a state that balances its priorities according to what its regime considers Ankara’s national interest.
In a NATO release published on July 10the concessions and commitments Turkey won to drop its objections to Sweden’s membership hopes were revealed, detailing huge security, economic and political gains.
According to the statement, since the last NATO summit, Sweden and Turkey have “worked closely together to address” what it described as Ankara’s “legitimate security concerns”.
As part of the process, Sweden amended its constitution, changed its laws, expanded its counter-terrorism cooperation against the PKK (an ethnic Kurdish movement that Turkey considers a terrorist organization), and resumed arms exports to Turkey, all steps set in the Tripartite Memorandum agreed in 2022.
Turkey’s gains don’t stop there, with the NATO statement adding that Sweden and Turkey also agreed to “intensify economic cooperation” through the Turkey-Sweden Joint Economic and Trade Commission (JETCO).
A further, final, commitment could be seen as the icing on the cake of the concession, with Sweden “actively supporting efforts to revitalize Turkey’s EU accession process”, including the modernization of the EU-Turkey Customs Union and release of visas.
Turkey can still cancel the deal
Commentary from the Atlantic Council think tank also pointed to Turkey’s gains in its stance against Sweden, with Rich Outzen, a non-resident senior fellow and former military and political adviser at the US State Department, describing it as “typical [Turkish President Recep Tayip] Erdogan is moving to take a maximalist position in a high-stakes negotiation, show a willingness to walk and then compromise for progress on key demands.”
There are also indications that Turkey could have won a rumored concession from the US to acquire new fourth-generation F-16 fighter jets, which would be seen as a major coup after Ankara was fired from the US-led F-35 stealth fighter program in 2019 amid concerns over the use of the Russian S-400 air defense system by the Turkish military.
However, there is one more hurdle to negotiate as the deal for Sweden’s NATO membership is sent to Turkey’s parliament for approval. Having recently won the general election, President Erdogan, who has rewritten the country’s constitution to further consolidate his power, may be able to win further concessions from NATO and Sweden.
Christopher Skaluba, director of the Scowcroft Center’s Transatlantic Security Initiative and former principal director of European and NATO policy at the US Department of Defense, said there was a “non-zero change” in some intervening circumstance, such as another public Koran burning in Sweden, would he could “use as a pretext” to derail the process again.
“I want to be optimistic, but I’m worried because I’ve seen this movie before,” Skaluba said.
Read the original at Defence247.gr
