After months of obstructionism, Ankara endorses Sweden's Nato accession process, in exchange for a series of assurances from Sweden, the European Union and the United States.
It was with an abrupt change of course and a handful of counterparts that are still far from fully understood that on Monday evening Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan gave the green light to Sweden's accession to Nato. The announcement of the agreement came from Vilnius, where the annual summit of Atlantic Pact countries is under way. Ankara thus reversed its position after months of negotiations that had yielded no positive outcome and had drawn no shortage of accusations of obstructionism against the Turkish government.
For a long time Erdogan maintained a firm and uncompromising line that imposed heavy conditions on Sweden, effectively causing Stockholm's accession process to fall out of step with that of Finland, which became an official member of the alliance in early April. There is still little clarity on what assurances were given to Ankara to persuade it to accept, or who ultimately held the key to this process. What is certain is that the parties with whom Erdogan must have reached an agreement before announcing his placet to the accession are, first and foremost, Sweden, followed closely by the European Union and the United States.
As far as Sweden is concerned, Turkey had shown considerable reluctance to endorse its Nato accession process immediately after Stockholm's formal application in May 2022. At the time, Erdogan was entering a particularly delicate electoral campaign, which culminated just a few weeks ago in a victory — for the first time in twenty years at a run-off — against a broad opposition front. On that occasion Ankara had accused the Swedish government of supporting and harbouring certain members of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (Pkk), which in Turkey and beyond is regarded as a terrorist organisation. In November 2022, the Swedish parliament sought to address these accusations by voting for a constitutional change that made it possible to tighten the crackdown on terrorist organisations, in order to comply with Turkey's demands. The first application of the law came in early July, when a Kurdish man was sentenced to four and a half years in prison for attempting to finance the Pkk.
All these developments are cited in the official announcement available on the Nato website. Although details remain scarce, among the points of agreement highlighted at the meeting between Erdogan, Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson and Nato Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, there is reportedly the creation by Nato of a structure for coordinating the fight against terrorism, as well as the gradual lifting of restrictions on arms exports from Stockholm to Ankara.
The other major lens through which Erdogan's unexpected announcement can be read concerns the process of Turkey's accession to the European Union. This is a point that will inevitably force Brussels to confront the tangled issue of the country's continued denial of fundamental rights and the rule of law. Ankara was granted candidate country status in December 1999; accession negotiations began in October 2005 but have been frozen since 2018 for precisely this reason. "We are opening the way for Turkey in the European Union and we will give the green light to Sweden's entry into Nato, as we did with Finland," Erdogan said even before arriving in Vilnius, causing no small amount of discontent. But it is precisely the prospect of a revitalisation of relations with the Union that may have convinced Ankara to lower its veto on Sweden, alongside two long-standing Turkish demands: the revision of the Customs Union and visa liberalisation.
"I am ready to work with the Turkish president and his country to strengthen defence in the Euro-Atlantic area. I look forward to welcoming Prime Minister Kristersson and Sweden as our 32nd ally in Nato." These are the words with which United States President Joe Biden welcomed the agreement reached in Vilnius. The role of the White House is not a secondary factor in Erdogan's moves: he is said to be banking on securing a batch of new F-16 fighter jets that have long been on the table in relations between Washington and Ankara. In an interview with CNN ahead of the summit, Biden had reiterated his support for the sale of F-16s to Ankara, but had indicated that it formed part of a broader package of decisions to strengthen the alliance's military capacity — and that is perhaps precisely what is being discussed in Vilnius at this moment.
