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NATO

Turkish president sends Sweden’s Nato application to parliament

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has signed the protocol on Sweden's accession to Nato and sent it to the country's parliament for ratification, the country's government announced on X.

Published: 23 October 2023 16:29 CEST
Turkish president sends Sweden's Nato application to parliament
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan at a meeting with Ukraine's President Zelenskyy on Friday. Photo: Ozan Kose/AFP

In a statement on X, Turkey’s Directorate of Communications said that the protocol would now be “referred to the Grand National Assembly”. 

The protocol will now go to the Turkish parliament’s foreign policy and defence committees for assessment, and then back to the foreign policy committee for a vote, after which it will be sent to be voted on in parliament. It then returns to Erdogan for the final, formal approval. 

Erdogan said at Nato’s summit in Vilnius in July that Sweden’s Nato membership would be put before his parliament in October, meaning he had only a week to go before his own deadline. 

Turkey and Hungary have delayed Sweden’s accession to the alliance for more than a year, with Erdogan and Hungary’s President Viktor Orban the only leaders from among its 31 member states not to have put the accession before their parliaments. 

In a statement on X, Sweden’s prime minister, Ulf Kristersson celebrated the “happy news”. 

“Now all that remains is for the parliament to handle the issue. We are looking forward to being a member of Nato.”  

Tobias Billström, Sweden’s foreign minister, also said Sweden was “looking forward” to joining the alliance in his own post on X. 

Sweden’s defence minister, Pål Jonson, told TT however that he “did not want to speculate” on how long it would take before Sweden’s application was finally approved.

Erdogan has justified the delay by claiming that Sweden has not done enough to crack down on the PKK terror group and the Gülen movement he blames for the country’s 2016 coup attempt, or to meet the terms of the tripartite agreement signed between Sweden, Finland and Turkey at Nato’s summit in Madrid in 2022. 

He has also condemned Sweden for allowing protests at which copies of the Quran, the holy book of Islam, have been burned. 

At he end of last month, however, he unexpectedly linked Turkish approval for Sweden’s Nato membership to permission from the US government for Turkey to buy F-16 fighter jets. 

“If they keep their promises, our parliament will keep its own promise as well. The Turkish parliament will have the final say on Sweden’s Nato membership,” Erdogan told the Reuters news agency a week after his foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, held talks in New York with his US counterpart Antony Blinken.

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MILITARY

EXPLAINED: Is national service compulsory in Sweden?

UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak recently revealed plans to introduce compulsory national service, referencing Sweden as an inspiration for this. But how does national service work in Sweden, and is it compulsory for everyone?

Published: 27 May 2024 15:19 CEST
EXPLAINED: Is national service compulsory in Sweden?

Although Sweden hasn’t formally been involved in a war since 1814, the country has had some sort of conscription system since the 17th century, excluding a seven-year window between 2010 and 2017, where it was scrapped (or more specifically, “suspended in peacetime”).

Historically, it applied to men only, but was extended to include women in 2010.

Is it mandatory?

Yes and no.

When a Swedish citizen turns 18, they receive a letter from The Swedish Defence Conscription and Assessment Agency asking for information on their health, interests and education, in order to determine whether they should be called up for compulsory military service, officially known as värnplikt (“duty to protect”). 

This document is sent out to all Swedes turning 18 in a given year, and it is mandatory to fill this in, with a few exceptions, such as people who receive benefits from the Social Insurance Agency or residential care homes for children and young people (like HVB-hem or SiS-hem).

Having said that, it is by no means every Swede turning 18 in a given year who actually ends up carrying out military service.

In 2023, the agency collected information on 102,286 young people in Sweden turning 18 that year, with 36,420 called up for testing.

If you don’t turn up to these tests, known in Swedish as mönstringen, you can be sentenced to brott mot totalförsvarsplikten or “crime against the total defence obligation”, which carries with it a fine of 2,000 kronor or up to a year in prison.

These tests at the Swedish Defence Conscription and Assessment Agency are mandatory, and include a theory test, a medical examination, eye and colour blindness tests, hearing tests, as well as an EKG test, pulse and blood pressure tests.

You’ll also need to do a general fitness test and a strength test, as well as an interview with a psychologist to determine whether you’re cut out for military training.

Each test will be scored separately, with your total points determining which course within the Swedish armed forces you’ll be assigned to. You’re allowed to express a preference, although you’re not guaranteed to get a position on the course of your choice. Military training (colloquially known as lumpen) takes between 9 and 15 months, depending on the course.

Not everyone who carries out these tests will actually be called up for military training – in 2023, 6,144 (around 6 percent of everyone turning 18 that year) were assigned a course within the Swedish army, where they were joined by an additional 1,166 individuals who had applied of their own accord. 

Those who pass the tests but who aren’t assigned a position in the army are placed in the reserves, alongside people who delayed their conscription (due to their studies, for example). People in this group could be called up to perform military service if Swedish security is placed on high alert.

What about conscientious objectors?

People who for religious or political reasons do not want to use weapons can apply to carry out weapon-free military service or vapenfri tjänst. 

This doesn’t mean that you won’t have to serve at all, but you could be assigned to civil basic training, which essentially means you’d help ensure that important services like healthcare, childcare or the fire services were still running if there was a crisis.

At the moment, there are no civil basic training courses for conscientious objectors running, although the government has the power to reintroduce these.

There is no programme in Sweden similar to UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s plans for 18-year-olds to dedicate one weekend a month volunteering in the community, for example by “delivering prescriptions and food to infirm people”.

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