Erdogan Rains on NATO’s Parade
With Sweden and Finland’s NATO accession within touching distance, Turkey has thrown a wrench into proceedings.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Monday that Swedish and Finnish delegations “should not bother” coming to Ankara for negotiations, reiterating his position from Friday when he said that the Swedes and Finns were harboring terrorists.
Considering the 30 current NATO members must agree unanimously on any new entries, Turkey’s opposition is significant.
It’s a fact Erdogan appears to know all too well, as analysts fear the Turkish leader seeks to wring all he can out of a process most leaders in the alliance would like to see concluded as soon as possible.
On the surface, Erdogan’s demands sit perfectly well with his government’s position. He has criticized Sweden and Finland for refusing to extradite some individuals affiliated with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK—a Kurdish group deemed terrorists by Turkey as well as the United States and European Union.
Sweden in particular is home to others Erdogan sees as enemies, including some followers of Fethullah Gulen, whom Erdogan blames for orchestrating a failed 2016 coup.
But to single out Sweden and Finland for hosting Turkish opposition elements belies the fact that they are present in many NATO countries. (Fethullah Gulen himself lives in Pennsylvania).
Steven Cook, an FP columnist and senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said that although Turkey’s anger at opposition groups is rational, the logic from there falls apart.
“What doesn’t follow to me is the argument that Foreign Minister Cavosoglu is going to make when he gets here, which is that there’s some sort of security threat to Turkey as a result. It doesn’t make any sense.”
As Cook explains, though the targets of the Turkish diplomatic tantrum may be Nordic, the audience is likely in Washington.
“It suggests that there’s really something else going on, and what’s really going on, is that there seems to be more opposition in Congress to Turkey’s F-16s.”
Turkey’s pending acquisition of the fighter jets is seen as a consolation prize for being kicked out of the more advanced F-35 program and a reward for its actions in the war in Ukraine, where it has played a role as a diplomatic interlocutor as well as a provider of crucial TB-2 combat drones to Kyiv.
For Biden, it would mean taking on Sen. Bob Menendez, the influential chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a frequent critic of Erdogan.
“It basically presents the Biden administration with a choice: either confront more of a mess in Congress—especially when you’re dealing with a powerful member of your own party, who can make your life miserable—or you have more of a mess in NATO,” Cook said.
Ever the agile politician, the flap over Sweden and Finland is also a chance for Erdogan to play to the home crowd.
Erdogan has already said he would not repeat the “mistake” the Turkish military government made in 1980 when it allowed Greece back into NATO’s military wing, a position that has allowed Athens “to take an attitude against Turkey” since.
Greece’s standing on Capitol Hill relative to Turkey’s is underscored by Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis being afforded the rare honor of addressing a joint session of Congress later today.
Though he is confident that the Turks, Swedes, and Finns will come to an agreement, the fact Erdogan is standing up at all helps add to his mythmaking as a unique leader in Turkey’s history, Ozgur Unluhisarcikli, the director of the Ankara office at the German Marshall Fund, told Foreign Policy.
“He can say in the past Turkish governments would unconditionally approve this application, well, as a strong leader, I’m not doing that,” Unluhisarcikli said.
Unluhisarcikli said Erdogan’s position is best understood as a two-level game, where his image at home, roughly a year out from an election, ranks higher than Western perceptions: “Will his reputation internationally be tarnished? Yes. But is it important? Not as important as his reputation domestically.”