Turkey’s voters head to the polls on Sunday in an election that will not only shape the country’s domestic policies, but could also affect Sweden’s NATO membership.
After Russia invaded Ukraine, Finland and Sweden abandoned decades of military neutrality and applied a year ago to join the world’s largest military alliance in an effort to strengthen their borders.
While most NATO members were quick to ratify the membership applications of the two Nordic countries, Turkey and Hungary held back.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused both countries, especially Sweden, of providing a safe haven for members of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and Democratic Union Party (PYD) in Syria, both of whom Ankara has labeled “terrorists”. are considered.
Erdogan also called on Finland and Sweden to lift an arms embargo on Turkey they imposed in 2019 following Ankara’s incursion into northern Syria.
He said these were important “security issues” for Turkey that needed to be resolved before agreeing to NATO expansion.
The three countries signed an agreement on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Madrid last year in which Finland and Sweden pledged to meet Turkey’s security demands.
Since then, Finland and Sweden have lifted the arms embargo aimed at extraditing suspects linked to the PKK, and Stockholm has passed an anti-terrorism law.
But Turkey has only ratified Finland’s NATO membership. Erdogan has said that Sweden has not yet met all of his country’s demands.
Right-wing demonstrations in Sweden involving the burning of the Quran and fake hanging of Erdogan led to further tensions and their NATO dialogue has come to a standstill.
After meeting with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Berlin in March, Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson told reporters he hoped Turkey would ratify Sweden’s NATO membership after the election.
Former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt shared a similar view.
“We signed a memorandum with Turkey committing us to a number of demands, which Stockholm has done everything possible to meet,” he told Al Jazeera.
“But at the moment nothing is happening in terms of ratification until we have clarity on who will rule Turkey in the coming years,” he said. “So we look forward to what happens after the elections and hope there will be a speedy ratification before the NATO summit in Lithuania in July.”
Bildt added that Turkey’s decision will also affect Hungary. Budapest followed Ankara’s example in the case of Finland.
“Hungarian Viktor Orban claimed that Finland’s and Sweden’s accusations of the rule of law in Budapest were one of the main reasons why Hungary blocked NATO membership ratification, but Orban is just playing a political game,” Bildt said, speaking of the Hungarian Prime Minister.
Gonul Tol, director of the Middle East Institute’s Turkey program and author of Erdogan’s War: A Strongman’s Struggle at Home and in Syria, told Al Jazeera that part of the reason the Turkish leader has dragged himself to Sweden is domestic are profits.
“His role in getting both Finland and Sweden to lift the sanctions they imposed on Turkey after the invasion of Syria and especially in getting Sweden to try to extradite PKK members appealed to nationalist voters,” she said.
Turkey will vote in presidential and parliamentary elections on Sunday as the country grapples with a cost-of-living crisis and a slump in its currency, the Turkish lira.
Erdogan is a candidate for the People’s Alliance, a coalition of his AK party and several right-wing parties.
Opinion polls showed Kemal Kilicdaroglu, a candidate for six opposition parties in the Nation Alliance, in the lead.
Kilicdaroglu calls himself a “democrat” and has promised to return to a “strong parliamentary system”, resolve the Kurdish issue and send Syrian refugees home. He also wants to move closer to the European Union as Ankara’s role on the world stage expands amid Russia’s war in Ukraine and Turkey’s involvement in Syria.
Nationalist Ancestral Alliance candidate Sinan Ogan is the remaining candidate in the race after Muharrem Ince of the Homeland Party withdrew this week.
Gol argued that the outcome of the Turkish elections will not have a dramatic impact on Sweden’s NATO membership.
“Whoever wins the election, Sweden’s NATO membership will be ratified,” she said.
As far as the foreign policy orientation of NATO and Turkey is concerned, I think an opposition victory will be good news for the West, as they are committed not only to Turkey’s role in NATO, but also to the EU to revive Turkey’s membership process,” she added. .
Özgür Ünlühisarcıklı, director of the Turkish office of the United States German Marshall Fund, told Al Jazeera: “So far, President Erdogan has formulated the issue very narrowly on the basis of the PKK. … A new government could frame it differently, in a broader way, by taking into account Turkey’s overall security strategy. That could be a possibility.”
“Moreover, while the recent Quran burning incident in Sweden has enraged Turkey, can Ankara actually stop Islamophobia by not ratifying Sweden’s membership in NATO?” he asked. “If Sweden can’t join NATO, will that make Turkey safer?
“These are aspects that the presidential candidates will have to frame effectively in the run-up to the elections, so as not to undermine the security of both Turkey and Sweden.”
The Swedish government condemned the Quran burning and Bildt said the Swedish public also does not join the “extremists” behind the Islamophobic stunts.
“Sweden has signed a memorandum with Turkey and now it is a matter of continuing with an implementation process that includes cooperation between our judiciary, our police authorities and our intelligence services to more effectively meet Turkey’s demands,” Bildt said.
“It’s not something you do over lunch, over one lunch,” he said. “It is understandable that Turkey is taking its time to assess our process and make a decision after their elections.”