This is the end of a suspense that lasted nineteen months. The Foreign Affairs Committee of the Turkish Parliament approved on Tuesday the text authorizing Sweden’s accession to NATO. The body transmitted it to the Plenary Assembly for final adoption, a formality which should follow in the coming hours or days but at a time – or date – which has not yet been specified.
Turkey was the last member of the Atlantic Alliance with Hungary to block Sweden’s path, multiplying demands and pretexts to justify its reluctance. A decision immediately welcomed by Swedish Foreign Minister Tobias Billström: “We are delighted to become a member of NATO,” he declared to the public television site SVT Nyheter.
Demands in the fight against terrorism
Sweden had submitted its application at the same time as Finland – admitted in April – after the start of the Russian war in Ukraine. “We are seeing a change in Sweden’s policy, some decisions adopted by the courts,” Fuat Oktay, AKP deputy (the ruling party), chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Turkish Parliament, remarked on Monday on the private channel NTV .
“We still had some requests for additional progress” in the fight against terrorism, he added without further details. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has objected since the start of the process to Stockholm’s supposed leniency towards certain Kurdish groups, which he considers terrorists.
Above all, it seems that after a long silence from Washington, a telephone interview in mid-December with American President Joe Biden finally overcame Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s reluctance.
The sale of American F-16 fighter jets to Turkey as a condition
Announced as a simple formality in November, including by Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, who spoke of “a few weeks”, the examination of the accession protocol collapsed after a single meeting.
At the beginning of December, the Turkish president added as a condition to Ankara’s ratification the “simultaneous” ratification by the American Congress of the sale of F-16 fighter planes to Turkey. “All this is linked,” he warned. Turkey had already played this card to try to obtain an American green light for the sale of F-16s, which it needs to modernize its air force.
The American government is not hostile to this sale but Congress has blocked it so far for political reasons, including tensions with Greece – also a member of NATO – with which Ankara has recently become closer.
Erdogan’s support for Hamas complicates the process
“It now seems obvious that the two processes will move forward in parallel,” the director of the German Marshall Fund in Ankara, Ozgur Unluhisarcikli, told AFP.
But, “although the questions are not related, the declarations of Turkey – and its president – supporting Hamas have further complicated the process of selling the F-16s,” notes the expert. According to him, “there is no real consensus within Parliament, nor in the American Congress”. “But if Mr. Biden and Erdogan demonstrate the required will, we can hope for a near outcome.”