Turkey admits Finland to NATO as Erdogan and Orban gang up on Sweden
Joel Gehrke
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Turkish lawmakers ratified Finland’s application to join NATO, setting the stage for the Nordic state’s admission into the trans-Atlantic alliance even as Turkey continues to block Sweden’s entry.
“All 30 NATO members have now ratified Finland’s membership,” Finnish President Sauli Niinisto said Thursday. “I want to thank every one of them for their trust and support. Finland will be a strong and capable ally, committed to the security of the alliance.”
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The vote marks a partial end to a standoff that obstructed Finland and Sweden’s attempt to make a sprint into NATO after Russia launched an attempt to overthrow the Ukrainian government. Yet it represents a divergence between Sweden and Finland that leaders in each country sought to avoid, as both Turkey and Hungary continue to use the application process as leverage in different disputes with Stockholm.
“Finland is now ready to join NATO,” Niinisto added. “We look forward to welcoming Sweden to join us as soon as possible.”
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan jolted the trans-Atlantic alliance last year by objecting to the Nordic applications. Erdogan anchored his protest in Swedish and Finnish arms embargoes on Turkey, as well as a broader complaint that they are too welcoming of Kurdish migrants whom Erdogan would condemn as terrorists linked to the PKK, a group of Turkish Kurdish separatists.
Erdogan’s hostility to Kurdish groups has emerged as a serious controversy in recent years, as U.S. and European officials agree that the PKK is a foreign terrorist organization, but they have worked closely with Iraqi and Syrian Kurds throughout the fight to dismantle the Islamic State since 2014. The three countries negotiated a trilateral memorandum to resolve the disputes, but Erdogan remains unsatisfied with Sweden’s performance, although NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg has praised Sweden’s fulfillment of the trilateral agreement.
“The most important thing is that both Finland and Sweden become members as soon as possible, not that they join exactly the same time,” Stoltenberg said last week. “And we will continue to work hard. It will be a top priority to ensure that also Sweden will become a full member in the near future.”
The path forward is complicated by Hungary. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s government has slow-walked the applications in parallel with Turkey; when Erdogan announced that Turkish lawmakers would proceed with Finland’s ratification, Hungary’s parliament hastened to vote to welcome Finland. With the dispute between Sweden and Turkey ongoing, Budapest is pressing Sweden to undercut the European Union’s decision to freeze Hungary’s access to “EU cohesion funds” — a step taken by Brussels due to a widespread perception that Orban’s government is corrupt.
“In the case of Sweden, there is an ample amount of grievances that need to be addressed before the country’s admission is ratified,” Orban spokesman Zoltan Kovacs wrote in a Thursday blog post. “Adding Ankara’s woes and grievances to the mix does not leave much room to maneuver, at least not until the Swedes start changing their tune and help these lingering wounds heal.”
Russia took Sweden’s solitary exclusion as an occasion to issue a new threat of retaliation against the Nordic applicants.
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“If anyone still believes that this [NATO membership] in any way will somehow improve Europe’s security, you can be sure that the new members of the hostile bloc will become a legitimate target for Russian retaliatory measures, including military ones,” Russian Ambassador Viktor Tatarintsev, Moscow’s top envoy in Sweden, said Tuesday.
Stoltenberg preempted such threats with a reminder of his own. “Many allies have given security assurances to both Finland and Sweden,” he said last week. “So it is absolutely inconceivable that there will be any threat against Finland or Sweden without NATO reacting.”