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Arms exports to Arab nations criticized

Activists have criticized the fact that Switzerland is increasing its arms exports to Arab regimes at a time of unrest in the Middle East.

Published: 29 July 2011 11:51 CEST

Arms exports to Arab nations criticized

Switzerland exported armaments worth Sfr.327 million in the first half of 2011, an increase of Sfr.31million compared to the same period last year.

The biggest customer was the United Arab Emirates, who bought PC-21 training airplanes worth Sfr.114 million, according to figures released on Thursday. Other customers for Swiss weapons in the Arab world included Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman and Kuwait.

The Group for a Switzerland without an Army (GSoA) criticized the exports.

“The Arab world is fighting for a democratic transformation. The contribution of official Switzerland: record exports of armaments to the ruling dictatorships,” the group said, demanding an end to arms sales to the crisis region.

Rainer Schweizer, a law professor at St. Gallen University, also called on Switzerland to halt weapons exports to the Arab regimes. “At the very latest when Saudi Arabia and the Emirates took steps against the opposition in Bahrain, the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs should have looked at halting the exports.”

The State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO), however, insists that the PC-21 turboprop aircraft are delivered without weapons to the UAE. In the case of Saudi Arabia, SECO said that the exports were primarily related to repairs and replacement parts for an anti-aircraft system that was delivered in 2006.

The Swiss government-owned company Ruag is already under pressure following reports that ammunitions exports to Qatar are being used by Libyan rebels.

Swiss law forbids any weapons to be sold to countries in conflict, while the United Nations has placed an arms embargo on Libya.

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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