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MILITARY

Swedish armed forces suffer new recruit exodus

Of the 300 recruits to the Swedish military that started their initial training in April 20 percent have left due to “physical reasons”, according to a report in Swedish daily Svenska Dagbladet (SvD).

Swedish armed forces suffer new recruit exodus

“We have failed somewhere in the physical selection,“ Per-Olof Stålesjö, human resources director of the armed forces, told SvD.

National Service was abolished in Sweden on July 1st 2010. Since then the Swedish Armed Forces have been trying to recruit young people with massive advertising campaigns asking “Have you got what it takes?”.

According to SvD, the plan was to recruit 4,000 young Swedes every year.

Successful applicants then undergo a basic training course (Grundläggande Militär Utbildning – GMU), lasting three months.

The new figures show that out of the 6,600 applicants to the first intake, 862 were recruited. Out of these recruits 15 percent left during training.

In the second intake, which comprised 300 recruits and is underway at the moment, the drop out rate has increased further.

“So far, 20 percent have left. We will need to analyse why this is so,” said colonel Lars Hammarlund, in charge of training.

According to the military, one of the reasons is that many of the new recruits can’t take the physical strain that soldiering entails.

”This gives us reason to review the physical tests and examinations in the recruitment process,” Stålesjö told SvD.

A report from the Swedish Defense Research Agency (Totalförsvarets Forskningsinstitut – FOI) shows that the military was initially too optimistic in their predictions, expecting the drop out rate to stay at 15 percent, based on figures from National Service.

However, in the report the agency pointed out that previous experiences from neighbours Denmark and Norway showed that the drop out rate of new recruits often reached 30 percent.

The report also showed that an increase in recruits leaving will cost the already cash-strapped Swedish Armed Forces somewhere close to 745 million kronor ($118 million).

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NATO

Erdogan links Swedish Nato approval to Turkish EU membership

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Monday he would back Sweden's Nato candidacy if the European Union resumes long-stalled membership talks with Ankara.

Erdogan links Swedish Nato approval to Turkish EU membership

“First, open the way to Turkey’s membership of the European Union, and then we will open it for Sweden, just as we had opened it for Finland,” Erdogan told a televised media appearance, before departing for the NATO summit in Lithuania.

Erdogan said “this is what I told” US President Joe Biden when the two leaders spoke by phone on Sunday.

Turkey first applied to be a member of the European Economic Community — a predecessor to the EU — in 1987. It became an EU candidate country in 1999 and formally launched membership negotiations with the bloc in 2005.

The talks stalled in 2016 over European concerns about Turkish human rights violations.

“I would like to underline one reality. Turkey has been waiting at the EU’s front door for 50 years,” Erdogan said. “Almost all the NATO members are EU members. I now am addressing these countries, which are making Turkey wait for more than 50 years, and I will address them again in Vilnius.”

Sweden’s prime minister, Ulf Kristersson, is due to meet Erdogan at 5pm on Monday in a last ditch attempt to win approval for the country’s Nato bid ahead of Nato’s summit in Vilnius on July 11th and 12th. 

Turkey has previously explained its refusal to back Swedish membership as motivated by the country’s harbouring of people connected to the PKK, a Kurdish terrorist group, and the Gülen movement, who Erdogan blames for an attempted coup in 2016. 

More recently, he has criticised Sweden’s willingness to allow pro-Kurdish groups to protest in Swedish cities and allow anti-Islamic protesters to burn copies of the Quran, the holy book of Islam.

In a sign of the likely reaction of counties which are members both of Nato and the EU, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said that the two issues should not be connected. 

“Sweden meets all the requirements for Nato membership,” Scholz told reporters in Berlin. “The other question is one that is not connected with it and that is why I do not think it should be seen as a connected issue.”

Malena Britz, Associate Professor in Political Science at the Swedish Defence University, told public broadcaster SVT that Erdogan’s new gambit will have caught Sweden’s negotiators, the EU, and even Nato Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg off guard. 

“I think both the member states and Stoltenberg had expected this to be about Nato and not about what the EU is getting up to,” she said. “That’s not something Nato even has any control over. If Erdogan sticks to the idea that Turkey isn’t going to let Sweden into Nato until Turkey’s EU membership talks start again, then Sweden and Nato will need to think about another solution.” 

Aras Lindh, a Turkey expert at the Swedish Institute of Foreign Affairs, agreed that the move had taken Nato by surprise. 

“This came suddenly. I find it hard to believe that anything like this will become reality, although there could possibly be some sort of joint statement from the EU countries. I don’t think that any of the EU countries which are also Nato members were prepared for this issue.”

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