NATO membership: Turkey’s conditions for Finland, Sweden

NEW YORK: Spurred by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Finland and Sweden applied last month to join NATO, anticipating swift and smooth entry into the alliance.

Instead they are in a bind, their path blocked by the unpredictable Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

With NATO’s annual summit beginning on June 29 in Madrid, their expectations to be greeted as fast-track applicants are quickly fading, after Erdogan backtracked on earlier promises not to put obstacles in their way.

Ibrahim Kalin, Erdogan’s main foreign-policy spokesman, says there is no schedule for their acceptance, and has even talked of a delay of a year. Finland is especially frustrated, mindful of its 830 miles of border with Russia.

After the Feb. 24 invasion, Finland moved quickly to prepare its application, and Finnish diplomats, according to Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto, checked with all 30 NATO members in advance and got rapid green lights from them all. That included an assurance from Erdogan himself, Finland’s president, Sauli Niinisto, has said.

NATO was so confident that the invitation to both countries would go smoothly that it choreographed a series of events around a vote accepting the applications in May, which the alliance had to cancel when Turkey suddenly objected.

Erdogan has made numerous demands, mostly centering on nationalist issues with domestic impact, like Kurdish separatism and terrorism, and the extradition of some followers of an exiled opposition leader, Fethullah Gulen.

Erdogan blames Gulen, who lives in the United States, for a failed coup attempt against him in 2016.

Turkey wants both Finland and Sweden to strengthen their antiterrorism laws; to extradite particular people, including a number of Kurdish journalists; and to eliminate an informal embargo on arms sales to Turkey, imposed after Turkey’s military intervention in northern Syria in 2019. Finns are deeply frustrated but the government counsels patience, said Haavisto in an interview.

“The very same terrorist legislation is almost in all NATO countries,” he said, and “we all condemn the P.K.K.,” the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, a group operating in Turkey and Iraq that the European Union and the United States have labelled a terrorist organisation. “So we feel that the pressure is also not only so much against Finland and Sweden, but against some other NATO countries on this issue,” he added. NATO countries should have similar criteria for all states, he said, “because otherwise we come to the situation where different NATO member states would put different criteria to applicants, and I would guess that would end up in chaos.”

On Monday, there was the first meeting in several weeks of Swedish, Finnish and Turkish officials under the auspices of NATO, but the results were minimal. “We don’t see ourselves limited by any timetable,” Kalin said afterward. “The speed, scope of this process depends on these nations’ manner and speed of meeting our expectations.”

Most of those demands have to do with Sweden and its longstanding sympathy for Kurdish refugees and the Kurdish desire for autonomy, which Turkey regards as a threat to its own sovereignty. While the West condemns the P.K.K., it has relied heavily on a Syrian Kurdish offshoot in the fight against the Islamic State. And Turkish Kurdish leaders long ago abandoned talk of independence to concentrate on autonomy and increased rights for Turkish Kurds. Erdogan is facing elections next June, and his popularity is slipping along with the Turkish economy. The Kurdish issue is an important one in Turkey and he is playing on nationalist sentiment now, while suppressing political dissent and independent journalism.