Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday bolstered his image as a petty little tyrant by declaring that he would reject Finland and Sweden’s bids to join NATO, hampering Western efforts to clamp down on Vladimir Putin’s aggression fight back
Worse, the Turkish threat inspired tiny Croatia to also declare opposition, although this is likely just an attempt to gain some sort of bribe from other members.
After Russia’s war against Ukraine, both the Swedes and the Finns abandoned decades-old policies against entanglement in alliances, be they military or political.
It was a realization that the world had changed: it is no longer possible to see NATO as a tool of US imperialism, while post-Soviet Russia no longer leads a power bloc (but unfortunately is on the way to gaining rogue nation status to get). .
And both Finland and Sweden have moved closer to NATO, working together on several fronts. “This is a good day at a critical moment for our security,” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said the day before Turkey’s announcement. “Every nation has the right to choose its own path.”
Erdogan’s complaint is actually his own bribery demand: he wants the Swedes and Finns to end their support for “terrorist organizations”, most notably the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, and to lift export bans on certain arms sales to Turkey.
In fact, the two nations have merely offered support to the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, which cooperate to some extent with the PKK (because beggars can’t be picky). Ironically, early in his tenure, Erdogan was actually moving closer to peace in Ankara’s decades-long struggle against the PKK in Turkey before his imperialist/Islamist ambitions reopened the conflict.
That is, his insistence that the rest of NATO respect Turkey’s “national security” is really a call for a free hand for policies deeply at odds with core Western beliefs, including Stoltenberg’s “Every nation has the right to choose their own path”.
“NATO enlargement is important to us insofar as it respects our sensitivities,” Erdogan stressed. But increasingly Turkey is the outsider.
Leading Swedes and Finns will meet with President Biden to discuss a way forward; greater bilateral cooperation with most of NATO is a sure bet. Too bad Biden doesn’t have the skills to force a “yes” from Turkey, sending another message to Putin that the West will never pull itself together.