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President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan is holding a press conference during NATO Summit
Turkey finally greenlights Sweden’s entry into NATO
Stockholm is finally within sight of joining NATO after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Monday submitted a bill to parliament approving Sweden’s membership. There is no set timeline for its passage, but a similar bill for Finland passed in 13 days.
The process had been held up over Ankara’s insistence that Sweden do more to clamp down on the Kurdistan Workers Party, whose armed wing has waged a decades-long insurgency in the eastern highlands. Stockholm promised to involve its intelligence agencies in asylum applications from Turkish Kurds, among other steps, but Ankara remained unsatisfied, dragging the process out.
It’s not clear that Sweden did anything in recent days to precipitate Erdogan’s acquiescence, but he has been facing increased exasperation from NATO allies. After all, he said he would pass on Sweden’s accession to parliament at the NATO summit in July. Getting even that far took the Biden administration dropping its objections to Turkey buying F-16 jets and Sweden promising to help with Ankara’s moribund European Union membership bid.
Since then, the world has changed considerably. With the war in Israel and Ukraine’s counteroffensive making torturously slow progress, Erdogan may sense a better deal is not in the cards. And, with his F-16s held up by the US Senate, he may also sense the time is right to give a little in order to gain a little rhetorical leverage.
Supporters of the Popular Mobilization Forces protest in Tahrir Square in Baghdad to denounce the burning of the Quran and the Iraqi flag in Stockholm.
Sweden, the Quran, and NATO
When Sweden announced in May that it wanted to join NATO, much of the world treated its membership as a done deal. Then, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan reminded us that NATO’s requirement of unanimous consent gave him veto power.
A month later, an incident in Stockholm appeared to fuel Erdogan’s resistance to Sweden’s accession. An Iraqi-born expat publicly burned a copy of the Quran in the capital, an act Sweden’s government insisted it was powerless to forbid under Swedish law. This angered governments, leaders, and citizens across the Muslim world, including Erdogan.
Then, at last week’s NATO Summit in Vilnius, Erdogan surprised the world by announcing that Turkey would not stand in Sweden’s way. A grateful Biden administration responded with a pledge to send Turkey F-16 fighter jets that Erdogan badly wants. Again the world’s media declared that Sweden’s path was certain … until Erdogan added that Turkey’s parliament wouldn’t provide final signoff until October.
On Thursday, Quran-desecrating protesters reappeared in Stockholm and publicly damaged a book they said was the Quran. Rioters in Iraq responded by storming the Swedish Embassy in Baghdad and setting it on fire, and the Iraqi government expelled the Swedish ambassador. Governments in Europe fumed at the Iraqi government’s failure to protect the Embassy.
And now? We’re left with a group of protesters in Sweden who’ve discovered they can generate international headlines whenever they want, a political issue that continues to pit European and Muslim governments against one another, and the reality that, with those American F-16s still on the runway, Sweden’s membership in NATO will continue to depend on the goodwill of Turkey’s government for at least several more months.