Filenews 18 May 2022
By Bobby Ghosh
What exactly does Recep Tayyip Erdogan want from NATO? More than that, does NATO need to give it to it?
On Friday, with the alliance awaiting official applications for membership from Finland and Sweden, the Turkish president casually threw "sand in the machine", saying his country "would not view positively" the expansion of the North Atlantic Alliance.
According to the rules of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, applications from prospective new members must be approved by all 30 countries belonging to its ranks. Erdogan is threatening not only to veto the expansion, but also to undermine a demonstration of NATO unity in the face of Russian aggression, dangerously close to its borders, in Ukraine.
Kurds
His explanation: the two would-be NATO members host activists from Turkey's Kurdish minority, some of whom belong to the Kurdistan Workers' Party or PKK, which Turkey considers a terrorist group. "Scandinavian countries are like hostels of terrorist organizations," Erdogan said in remarks in front of the cameras.
Turkey has long complained about Kurdish activism in northern Europe. Ankara also feels that the palmaré of NATO member countries - and the West in general - do not provide sufficient cooperation in its fight against Kurdish separatists. Although the U.S. and the European Union have officially designated the PKK as a terrorist organization, they support the YPG (People's Protection Units), a related to the first Kurdish armed group operating mainly in Syria, in its fight against the Islamic State.
But although Erdogan's rhetoric on Friday was familiar rather than original, its timing seemed like pure opportunism. It has been known for several weeks that Helsinki and Stockholm were going to apply for NATO membership, but there were no warning signals from Ankara.
Quite the contrary. When he spoke with Finnish President Sauli Ninisto on the phone a month ago, Erdogan reportedly raised the issue of Finland's accession to NATO and even said that he is... in her favour.
On Sunday, Ninisto said Turkey's change of attitude had left him "somewhat confused." At a meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Berlin on the same day, Erdogan's foreign minister again broke the general consensus of the 30 countries to express his concerns about the Alliance's expansion. "To be more specific, representatives of these two countries had meetings with members of the PKK and the YPG, while Sweden also provided them with weapons," Mevlut Çavuşoğlu told reporters.
Erdogan's spokesman, meanwhile, stressed that Ankara is not closing NATO's door to the two applicants and that Turkey could be persuaded to abandon its objections. Sweden, with a sense of duty, sends a delegation to Ankara to find out what it would take to change Erdogan's mind. Ninisto said he would make another phone call. Other Western leaders will likely add their voices to the attempt to ease Turkish resistance.
Scenario
The best-case scenario from a NATO perspective is for the Turkish leader to be satisfied only with the attention he is receiving - he has a weakness in the spotlight. Some expressions of reflection on Ankara's concerns from the Finns and Swedes, along with the promise that they would be vigilant about any anti-Turkish activity on their territory, would allow Erdogan to claim, for his domestic audience, that he has extracted significant concessions from the Europeans.
He will undoubtedly want more, including more sophisticated weapons from his NATO partners and possibly some financial assistance. NATO countries seeking Erdogan's signature should not back down mischievously: Erdogan is unable to endure for long with his legs rigged.
The domestic audience is the key to understanding where their mind is right now. Turkey's economic crisis - rising inflation and the fall in the lira are just two of the indicators of its severity - has made its president politically more vulnerable than at any other time in his nearly two decades at the helm of the nation. Its polling performance is very poor, the powerful workers' unions are restless, the traditional opposition parties are rallying, and new opponents are emerging.
With just one year left for the next presidential election, Erdogan desperately needs some victories. He has swallowed his pride and cast aside his long-standing contempt for the Gulf Arab sheikhata, in the hope that they will save the Turkish economy. But even if the billions of dollars of promised investments are realized, it will take years for ordinary Turks to see some benefit.
Composure
On the broader international stage, having moved counterbalance to his NATO partners for years, making Vladimir Putin his "dear friend," Erdogan has been a rather peripheral figure in the alliance's most serious confrontation with Russia since the end of the Cold War. He sought the role of peacemaker between Moscow and Kiev, but to no avail.
In the run-up to next year's elections, he will probably make even more reckless moves: you have expected, for example, a repeat of his previous threats to unleash a flood of refugees on Europe, unless the EU gives Ankara more aid.
The challenge for Turkey's NATO partners, but also for those seeking to join the Alliance, is to keep their collective composure in the face of its antics.
Source: BloombergOpinion
