Will Turkey Stall Nordic Countries Entry Into NATO, Again?
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Roshan Amiri
- . July 3, 2022
- . Update: July 3, 2022 1:06 pm
Turkey–While the recent NATO meeting has seen Finland and Sweden join their bloc making it 30 countries, Turkey continues to threaten that it will not the alliance come through.
As Erdogan stood in the historic signing off where Finland and Sweden are now under the NATO banner, he is also claiming that he does not intend to let this partnership go through smooth sailing unless both the countries promise to see through the new accession deal with Ankara.
It was a surprising and rather blunt warning that came after the end of the NATO summit. The signing in comes at a time when the Western nations are joining forces to respond to the threat from Russia, post Kremlin’s attack on Ukraine. Finland and Sweden both have dropped their long-standing commitment to military alliance to join the bloc as Nordic countries.
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Turkey has been blaming both the nations for providing a safe haven for outlawed Kurdish militants and promoting “terrorism.” Erdogan has been expressing and exhibiting complete intolerance for Kurdish origins and has termed many as militants. Erdogan also demanded they lift arms embargoes imposed in response to Turkey’s 2019 military incursion into Syria.
On the sidelines of the summit, a 10-point memorandum was signed between the three nations. All looked well as Erdogan received the US President and spoke about the Nordic countries joining the bloc. But he did not leave the chance to also throw in a warning that everything wasn’t good with Turkey just because a memorandum was in place. Erdogan delivered his message one day after Turkey said it would seek the extradition of 12 suspects from Finland and 21 from Sweden.
New countries’ applications must be approved by all members and ratified by their respective parliaments. Turkey could delay this process.
