The Turkish parliament will start discussing Sweden’s membership in October, as Erdoğan promised in July.
A long time passed in October before it started to happen.
In the July evening of the NATO meeting in Lithuania, the President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdoğan promised that he would take Sweden’s NATO membership to the parliament to be decided “as soon as possible”. Before that, he had delayed the matter for a year.
It soon became clear that, in Turkey’s opinion, October was the fastest possible schedule.
In the second week of October, at the NATO defense ministers’ meeting, the tone of voice of the ministers and diplomats began to tighten. Turkey must do what it has promised, which is to accept Sweden into the military alliance.
Secretary General of NATO Jens Stoltenberg had been repeating for over a year that Turkey’s concerns must be understood. This diplomacy started to be enough for some NATO countries, and more effective means were considered.
Turkey seemed to be inventing new tones for its own demands on Sweden.
It moved a couple of days ago. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg announced to the public that he had a conversation with the Turkish president. The topic had been the situation in the Middle East and Sweden’s NATO membership. On Tuesday, Stoltenberg will visit Sweden, and he has a confident message: Erdoğan will take the ratification to parliament.
Parliament’s choreography is complicated, and no exact processing schedule is known. It can take several long weeks.
It is difficult to know what has happened in Turkey’s tactics in the last few days.
Erdogan has been playing for time. Now, in Erdogan’s calculations, the time is ripe.
In September, Erdogan demanded that the United States sell F-16 fighter jets to Turkey before the Swedish case moves forward. To our knowledge, this has not happened.
In Sweden, Turkey’s progress has been welcomed. Foreign Minister Tobias Billström evaluated by SVTthat the membership could take place in November.
Sweden is during the NATO process got into many painful situations. The Koran burners have probably tried to deliberately delay Sweden’s accession to NATO.
Turkey has accused Sweden of being too lenient towards terrorism. Hatred of Swedes led a man accused of jihadist links in Belgium to attack Swedish football fans, and he shot dead two Swedes.
The gas pipeline and cable breaks in the Baltic Sea also remind us that the situation in the North is tense. Sweden is urgently rebuilding its own defense, which it dismantled to a minimum after the Cold War. The country is also in a hurry to become part of NATO’s joint defense plans.
At the same time, the long-simmering gang crime in Sweden has become rampant and the violence has taken many lives.
Finland sneaked into NATO before Sweden, although the intention was to join together. Finland has also managed to demand Sweden’s membership at every turn.
In terms of the unity of the defense alliance, the situation has been embarrassing when one – or two – countries keep the entire alliance in tension.
Membership approval is pending in Hungary as well. Hungary has used EU policy disagreements as a weapon in the delay and accused Sweden of lying about the state of Hungarian democracy. The same situation was in the spring regarding Finland, but after Turkey’s announced ratification, Hungary also took care of the matter quickly.
The volatile situation in the Middle East, the conflict between Israel and Gaza, and the protracted war in Ukraine are now the top concerns of European and Western world leaders. Sweden’s accession to NATO as soon as possible would be one less worry.