Will they or won’t they? Since Sweden applied to join NATO last year, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban have been blocking its membership in the alliance. Now Sweden has gone above and beyond in accommodating Turkish demands. Erdogan, having won his third term, no longer needs to act tough for his home audience. For the sake of Western unity, the two leaders must drop their vetoes and admit Sweden as the 32nd ally at the NATO summit in Vilnius next month.
Their parallel tracks of obstruction have certainly raised eyebrows. Both have been notably cordial with Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose attack on Ukraine motivated Finland and Sweden to seek protection inside NATO in the first place. Erdogan even bought a Russian system of surface-to-air missiles, a head-scratcher for a NATO ally.
Orban, whose country is also in the EU, keeps resisting the bloc’s sanctions on Russia. This month, he was awarded the First Degree of Russia’s Order of Glory and Honor by Kirill, Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, confidante of Putin and staunch supporter of the invasion of Ukraine.
Erdogan and Orban claim to have their own reasons for blocking Sweden, and say they are not coordinating. If so, their lockstep is a remarkable coincidence. Sweden applied jointly with its Nordic neighbor Finland, and initially Erdogan and Orban vetoed both. When Erdogan finally gave the nod to Helsinki this spring, Orban dropped his objections at the same time.
Erdogan’s beef with Sweden is more fathomable than Orban’s. The Turkish strongman accuses the Scandinavians of coddling Kurds and “terrorists,” which for Erdogan are interchangeable terms. Sweden has long labeled the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a Kurdish guerrilla movement, as a terrorist organization, but so far not the various other Kurdish groups in Syria that Erdogan also wants to eradicate. So Erdogan insisted that Sweden crack down harder on terrorists under the Turkish definition, banning their rallies and extraditing to Turkey any Kurd he wants to lock up. He also demanded that Sweden drop its embargo on arms sales to Turkey, imposed for Erdogan’s military adventurism in Syria in 2019.
I did not expect that Sweden, which used to think of itself as a moral superpower, would cave to Erdogan’s blackmail so fast, but it has. The ban on weapons deliveries was dropped last fall. That arguably makes sense among countries planning to be allies. Designations of what constitutes a terrorist group have also been tightened. A new law kicked in this month that criminalizes any participation in such movements — a big deal, since it also required tweaking the Swedish constitution’s clauses on freedom of association. The Council on Legislation, a legal watchdog, criticized it.
Now the extraditions are starting. Last week, Sweden’s highest court allowed the government to decide whether to send a man who supports the PKK to Turkey.
However, when he was arrested there in 2014, it was for possession of cannabis, not terrorism. When he was later paroled, he moved to Sweden, where he was arrested again on request from Ankara. He now says Turkey wants him not for weed, but for his Kurdish sympathies and “insulting the president.” Erdogan has a list of about 100 others he wants extradited.
Such cases would prompt Swedes to wonder how much NATO membership is worth to them. Last month, a group of Swedish intellectuals published an open letter in which they worried about rule of law in the country. What if Erdogan next decides he wants to depose King Carl XVI Gustaf and proclaim a Swedish republic, then give it Sharia?
In a world that has evil aggressors such as Putin, the sad reality is that joining the alliance is indeed worth the cost in liberty, as long as that stays within limits.
It is not only Sweden that gains security; the alliance does too. Finland added a huge land army to NATO. Sweden would add martial prowess in the air, at sea and in cyberspace — as well as Gotland. That Swedish island in the Baltic Sea is strategically located just across from the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad and the three exposed NATO allies Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.In more peaceful times, it was demilitarized.
However, since Putin’s annexation of Crimea, the Swedes have stationed troops there again. Because it is a perfect — that is, unsinkable — aircraft carrier, it is assumed that both sides — Russia and NATO — would try to control it in a conflict. Let us instead make Gotland officially part of NATO right now.
If Erdogan and Orban do not understand the military and geopolitical importance of Swedish accession to NATO, then the 29 other members should question the pair’s loyalty to the alliance. In time, that ambiguity could become a threat to the West as grave as Putin, but more insidious. Now is the chance for Orban and Erdogan to reflect on priorities — and then embrace Sweden with open arms.
Andreas Kluth is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering European politics. A former editor-in-chief of Handelsblatt Global and a writer for The Economist, he is author of Hannibal and Me.
This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
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