By Emre Küpcük
ANKARA — As Finland and Sweden announced their bid to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) ranks, Turkey has warned to veto the membership of the Scandinavian allies unless they meet some diplomatic preconditions first. This is nothing new for NATO as new countries being admitted depends on the approval of all of its existing members. In this situation, Turkey is putting its foot down against its allies as a bid to counter terrorism.
Turkey, the allies and the PKK
Turkey, the U.S. and the EU have so far declared the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party) a terrorist organization. Moreover, their affiliates are also recognized terrorist organization by the U.S. and the Turkish allies. These organizations’ activities still persist in south-eastern Turkey and Northern-Iraq. One of their most known affiliates the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Party (PYD) and the YPG have also been seeking worldwide political recognition and were given offices in the US, and Brussels which gives them a certain logistical and semi-legal position to conduct operations outside Turkey. This has already been a diplomatically severing issue between Turkey and its allies which make it extremely difficult for Turkey to eradicate terrorism.
And now, it’s affecting Turkey’s perception of the Swedish and Finnish NATO applications.
Turkey and Sweden
Although Sweden and Finland both list the PKK as a terrorist organization, attitudes to its Syrian branch, the YPG are more lenient. This is because the YPG was crucial in combating ISIS in Syria and its leaders have even been given offices and hosted in European capitals with EU heads of state. That said, given that tens of thousands Turkish men, women and children have died at the hands of PKK and its affiliates for the past 35 years, from a foreign policy viewpoint alone, Turkey expects its allies to understand the security concerns it has when admitting a new member to NATO. The Turkish problem comes as Turkey reports Sweden and Finland have refused to extradite 33 people wanted by Turkey. This behavior, unfortunately for the new candidates, is incompatible with any security alliance. In Turkey’s case, there are people directly linked to terrorist attacks who are given transparent asylum in the EU. A reason why Turkey is now threatening to veto the Swedish and Finnish membership now can be clearly said to be a result of how its current allies seemingly “betray” it in countering terrorism.
The Feeling of Betrayal
Turkey has continuously asked for the EU to ban PKK and its affiliates’ activities and symbols. Moreover, it has also demanded on multiple occasions, especially under the escalation of PKK and YPG activities in 2015, that the EU as an ally put an active effort in helping the Turkish counterterrorism agenda by banning any financial activities of these groups and its individuals in EU soil as well. One Turkish ally, Germany, has already extended its bans against PKK and YPG supporters as an effort to help Turkey. However, many other EU institutions and member states continue to support soft power initiatives of these organizations in hopes that their favored political solution to the conflict in Turkey will come to fruition.
Significantly, in 2017 the United States, one of the biggest allies of Turkey, chose a problematic partner to fight against ISIS: the YPG. This cooperation has yielded significant military successes but also dramatically worsened the Turkish situation. Moreover, despite the fact that the YPG may be a significant short term ally to Washington and Brussels, not only are the allies supporting recognised terrorist organizations, but they are arming them against one of their most important allies in countering terrorism and ultimately de-escalating and ending the Syrian civil war. Diplomatically speaking, it is difficult for Turkey not to make harsh diplomatic decisions when its own allies choose the lesser evil and ultimately perpetuate death and violence at the expense of the Turkish military.
The problem lies not only here where the allies first declare an organization as a terrorist organization only to aid and abet them to combat the “greater evil”. The problem lies at the clear cognitive dissonance the US and the EU live through, whereby they want a fairer Turkey with better systems in place and less conflict, allow for Kurdish Terrorist Militants to freely logistically and operatively be active in their soil, ignore the fact that they have signed these organizations as terrorists for more leeway in their support and then turn to Turkey to ask why it is the way it is.
Ankara- Moscow
Despite this, while Erdogan’s Turkey has long been occupied with PKK activities within the EU, its late ally Russia has never recognized the group as a terrorist organization and until the Ukrainian conflict, Turkey was on its way to further warm its relationships with Moscow. This brings up another question, is the reasoning behind the Turkish threat to veto Finland and Sweden, a last attempt of Erdogan to secure his place in the upcoming elections?
Refugees & Elections
Turkey currently hosts over 6 million refugees in its borders. The refugee question is nothing new to Turkey as it has been the topic of conversation for the past decade. However, Erdogan’s eased citizenship policies for the refugees, lack of integration of the refugees and the lack of background checks made on male refugees to Turkey combined with Turkey’s current economic crisis has led to the refugee question becoming a real problem for Erdogan’s projected votes. In the last few months, episodes of racial hatred against Arab communities and Syrians have become increasingly frequent, including violent riots in the nation’s capital in the summer of 2021. Due to Erdogan’s notions of muslim brotherhood and the increasing socio-economic change in Turkey, many Turkish citizens, Erdogan supporter or not, now perceive any Arabic or Syrian populations as symbols of a silent invasion of “arabization” in their country. This in turn has been shifting the refugee question from a question in Turkey to a matter of national survival.
As Erdogan’s voter base has been turning away from him, he recently changed his discourse, announcing that he is working on a community project in Turkish controlled safe zones in Syria that would see the return of at least one million refugees to their country. Erdogan launched operation Claw-Lock in Northern Iraq back in 2021 as a counterterrorism effort. However, Ankara has also taken control of specific territories since then and has been creating de-facto states which are ideal for relocating its refugee problem. If Erdogan succeeds with this project by demanding US or EU financial and military support to allow Finland and Sweden to join, and if the US or the EU in any way do help him to let Finland and Sweden join NATO smoothly the result would be a higher chance for Erdogan to succeed electorally during the general elections of 2023.
Conclusion
An international security alliance question for Turkey, a home affairs plot for the 2023 electorate or both, it is clear that for Turkey, the question of letting more allies into NATO given its past experiences is not unjustified mistrust. It is a justified mistrust of its allies and any further allies it may allow into the NATO circle which can only be fixed if the US and the EU begin to recognize PKK and all of its associates as terrorist organizations and get out of the cognitive dissonance in which they placed themselves. It is time for the US and the EU to dig themselves out of this hole of supporting their perceived lesser evil to fight a “greater evil”, if they want a strong alliance against their pressing issue of Russia with NATO.
Emre Küpcük Emre Küpcük is a student of European Studies at Maastricht University and the Chief Communications Officer of Bridge Europe. He focuses on the connection of human development to conservation and biodiversity, through building 'bridges' on sensitive topics with his organization.
BridgeEurope Blog serves as a platform for reflection and discussion on current topics. The opinions expressed in the blog represent the view of the authors solely and not the view of BridgeEurope.