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Turkey’s parliament set to debate Sweden NATO bid

The Turkish parliament was Tuesday set to resume debate on approving Sweden's bid to join NATO, a thorny issue that was further complicated after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan linked it to Ankara's request for F-16 fighter jets from its ally the United States.

Published: 26 December 2023 12:24 CET
BELGIUM-NATO-US-BLINKEN
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken (C) arrives alongside Swedish Foreign Minister Tobias Billstrom (R) to take part in the Nato Foreign ministers meeting in Brussels on November 28th, 2023. Photo by SAUL LOEB / POOL / AFP

Sweden and Finland dropped decades of military non-alignment and sought to join the US-led defence organisation after Russia invaded Ukraine last year.

Their bids won fast-track approval from all NATO members except Turkey and Hungary. The two ultimately relented and Finland was accepted as NATO’s 31st member in April.

Turkey and Hungary remain the only North Atlantic Treaty Organization members left to ratify Sweden’s bid 19 months after it applied for membership.

In November, the Turkish parliament’s foreign affairs committee failed to reach agreement on a text for a full floor vote and will meet again on Tuesday afternoon.

Erdogan in July lifted his objections to Sweden’s NATO membership after Stockholm cracked down on Kurdish groups that Ankara calls terrorists.

“We see that there is a change in policy in Sweden. We see some decisions taken in courts, albeit few,” Fuat Oktay, a lawmaker from Erdogan’s ruling AKP party and head of the parliament’s foreign affairs committee said in a televised interview on Monday.

“We had some requests for further steps to be taken,” he added.

Once it is approved by the committee, there will be a vote on the full parliament floor, where Erdogan’s ruling alliance holds the majority of seats.

NATO allies have piled pressure on Turkey, with France saying the credibility of the alliance was “at stake”.

Process fraught with problems

But the process is fraught with problems.

In December, Erdogan suggested that parliament will only act on Sweden if the US Congress approves Turkey’s requested purchase of dozens of F-16 fighter jets and spare parts, and if other NATO allies including Canada lift arms embargoes imposed on Ankara.

“Positive developments from the United States regarding the F-16 issue and Canada keeping its promises will accelerate our parliament’s positive view (on Sweden’s membership bid),” Erdogan said.

“All of these are linked,” he added.

“Sweden’s NATO membership and F-16 sales to Turkey will be handled in coordination to some extent… because unfortunately, neither country trusts the other,” Ozgur Unluhisarcikli, the Ankara office director of the US German Marshall Fund think tank, told AFP.

Turkey’s ageing air force has suffered from Ankara’s expulsion from the US-led F-35 joint strike fighter programme in 2019.

This was in retaliation for Erdogan’s decision to acquire an advanced Russian missile defence system that NATO views as an operational security threat.

US President Joe Biden’s administration has repeatedly promised to move forward with the $20-billion F-16 sale but lawmakers have blocked it over concerns about Turkey’s alleged violations of human rights and its past tensions with Greece.

“There is no strong consensus in the parliament on Sweden’s NATO membership, nor in the US Congress on the sale of F-16s to Turkey,” Unluhisarcikli said.

Erdogan’s anti-Israel rhetoric after the start of its war with Hamas had raised concerns in Washington.

“Although the issues are not related, Turkey’s statements supporting Hamas further complicated the F-16 process,” Unluhisarcikli said, adding that the killing of Turkish soldiers by Kurdish militants last weekend could also factor into Sweden’s NATO membership.

“But if Biden and Erdogan show the necessary will, we can expect the process to be concluded soon,” he added.

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INSIDE SWEDEN

Inside Sweden: Why troll factory won’t spark a government crisis

The Local's editor Emma Löfgren rounds up the biggest stories of the week in our Inside Sweden newsletter.

Published: 18 May 2024 09:22 CEST
Inside Sweden: Why troll factory won't spark a government crisis

Hej,

News that the Sweden Democrats are operating a far-right troll factory – which among other things the party uses to smear political opponents as well as its supposed allies – has caused probably the biggest rift yet between them and the three other parties that make up Sweden’s ruling coalition.

The leaders of the Moderates, Christian Democrats and Liberals all strongly criticised the Sweden Democrats’ blatant violation of the so-called “respect clause” in their Tidö collaboration agreement – the clause that states that the four parties should speak respectfully of each other in the media.

But after crisis talks held on Thursday, the conflict appears to be dying down.

The Sweden Democrats hit out strongly at the TV4 Kalla Fakta documentary where the troll factory was revealed, calling it a smear campaign and disinformation, but simultaneously went as far as to confirm that they do run anonymous social media accounts for which they refused to apologise.

They did say sorry to the Tidö parties for including them in the smear campaigns, and promised to remove some of the posts that had offended the other three parties, plus reassign a couple of members of staff to other duties until they’ve been given training on the Tidö “respect clause”.

But that doesn’t remove the fact that they vowed to continue the anonymous social media accounts whose existence they had prior to the documentary consistently denied, or the fact that some of the social media posts shared not only vague anti-immigration content, but white power propaganda.

The Liberals took the row the furthest, with Liberal leader Johan Pehrson describing people in his party as skitförbannade – pissed off as hell. He said ahead of the crisis meeting that they would demand that the Sweden Democrats cease all anonymous posting, which the latter rejected.

The party had two choices: walk out of the government collaboration and possibly spark a snap election, or walk back its strong words ahead of the meeting and wait for it to blow over.

They chose a kind of middle way, and called for an inquiry to be launched into banning political parties from operating anonymous social media accounts. The Social Democrats immediately accused the Liberals of trying to “bury the issue in an inquiry” – a classic Swedish political method of indecisive conflict avoidance which the Social Democrats themselves are well familiar with.

The Christian Democrats and Moderates both said that the Sweden Democrats had accepted their criticism and welcomed the party’s reshuffling of staff within its communications department, adding that it still had to prove its commitment to the Tidö agreement going forward.

So why isn’t this causing a bigger government crisis?

We asked Evelyn Jones, a politics reporter for the Dagens Nyheter daily, to come on the Sweden in Focus podcast to explain it to us:

“The Sweden Democrats are the biggest party in this coalition, even though they’re not part of the government. So the government really needs them. It’s hard for them to just stop cooperating with the Sweden Democrats,” she said.

“The cooperation between the government parties and the Sweden Democrats has been going pretty smoothly since the last election – more smoothly than a lot of people thought. This is probably the biggest crisis so far, but how big it is, is hard to say.”

You can listen to the full interview with her and the rest of the Sweden in Focus podcast here. 

In other news

If you are a descendant of a Sweden-born person and would like to find out more about them, there are ways to do that. I wrote this week about how to research your Swedish ancestry.

That guide was prompted by my interview with the chair of a community history group in a small parish in north-central Sweden, which has tried to get to the bottom of rumours that US mega star Taylor Swift’s ancestors hail from their village. I had so much fun writing this article.

The EU elections will be held on June 9th, but advance voting begins next week in Sweden. And poll cards are already being sent out, so if you’re eligible to vote you should receive yours soon.

Sweden’s consumer price index fell to 3.9 percent in April, below 4.0 percent for the first time in two years, reinforcing predictions that the central bank will keep lowering interest rates.

Sweden’s four-party government bloc has broken with the other parties in a parliamentary committee on public service broadcasting, adding what the opposition complains are “radically changed” proposals. How shocking are they?

Many people move to Sweden because of their partner’s career. Perhaps you’re one of these so-called “trailing spouses”. I’ve been asking readers in this situation how they’re settling in, and will have an article for you next week. There’s still time to answer our survey to share your experience.

Thanks for reading.

Have a good weekend,

Emma

Inside Sweden is our weekly newsletter for members which gives you news, analysis and, sometimes, takes you behind the scenes at The Local. It’s published each Saturday and with Membership+ you can also receive it directly to your inbox.

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