Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan linked Sweden’s NATO membership bid to Ankara’s efforts to join the European Union, throwing a wrench into the process hours before a summit where the Nordic nation had hoped to finalize its accession.
For more than a year, Turkey has held up Sweden’s application to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization over concerns that it has been too lax on combating terrorism.
“First come and open the way for Turkey in the EU; after that we’ll open the way for Sweden just like we did for Finland,” Erdogan told a press conference in Istanbul before leaving for Vilnius on Monday. He criticized what he called “countries keeping Turkey waiting at the EU’s door for almost 50 years.”
Erdogan’s comments on Monday represent the first time he has directly linked Turkey’s EU membership to Sweden’s NATO entry, and come a day after the Turkish leader spoke to US President Joe Biden. The US is pushing for a deal with Ankara that would allow Sweden’s entry into NATO.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz rejected the proposal, saying Turkey’s EU candidacy had nothing to do with Sweden’s NATO bid. The European Commission was quick to point out that the processes of joining the two blocs are entirely separate.
“The EU has a very structured process of enlargement and there is a very clear set of steps,” European Commission spokeswoman Dana Spinant told reporters in Brussels. “You cannot link two processes.”
After decades of outside of NATO, Sweden and its Nordic neighbor Finland, which borders Russia, applied following President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
Finland won Turkish approval three months ago and entered in April. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy is traveling to the summit in Vilnius as well to call for clear signals of support for Ukraine to join, although accession isn’t expected as long as the war persists.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said that, while the alliance should take into account Turkey’s security concerns, Erdogan should also consider his partners’ desire to strengthen their own defense posture by allowing Sweden in.
“If you just look at the map, if you have Sweden as a full member in addition to Finland, it really changes the geography, the NATO presence in this region,” Stoltenberg said, after hearing of the Turkish leader’s comments. Both he and Scholz said Sweden had met the requirements for membership.
“It’s still possible to have a positive decision on Swedish membership in Vilnius,” the NATO chief said. “We don’t have any certainty, we don’t have any guarantees, but we have the momentum of the summit. We’ll use that momentum to ensure as much progress as possible.”
Turkey has sought to join the EU since the 1980s. Formal negotiations, which began in 2005, have long stalled due to disagreements over issues including human rights, judicial independence and Ankara’s energy exploration in contested waters around Cyprus.
Terrorism
Turkey argues that it is holding back on approving Sweden’s NATO membership because of security concerns. Erdogan’s government argues that Stockholm must crack down further on Kurdish groups it deems are linked to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK — an armed militant organization considered terrorist by the EU and US.
Sweden has lifted a ban on arms sales to Turkey and amended its anti-terrorism laws as part of a deal clinched last year to break the impasse. In Sweden’s view, the new legal measures satisfy its last remaining obligation under an agreement signed at NATO’s Madrid summit to pave the way for ratification.
Last week, a court in Stockholm found a Turkish national guilty of attempted extortion on behalf of PKK, sentencing him to four and a half years in prison and ordering his expulsion after the sentence has been served.
Read More: Why Turkey Is Still Blocking Sweden’s NATO Accession: QuickTake
--With assistance from Lyubov Pronina, Kati Pohjanpalo and James Regan.
(Updates with comments and background from third paragraph. An earlier version of this story corrected the full name of NATO.)
Author: Patrick Sykes, Taylan Bilgic and Milda Seputyte