President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has made Turkey’s intentions plain
Nov 22,
2023. Posted by Balkan Periscope - Hellas
by
Robert Ellis*
In the Middle Ages, holding a knight to ransom was standard practice on the battlefield; it is still routine in international relations today.
For example, last December Russia traded basketball player Brittney Griner to the United States in exchange for an arms dealer, Viktor Bout. In September, Iran released five Americans accused of espionage in return for nearly $6 billion in oil revenue frozen in a South Korean bank. The fate of some 240 hostages taken by Hamas in its attack on Israel on October 7 plays a key role in the outcome of the conflict.
Five years
ago, Nate Schenkkan, project director at Freedom House, noted that
hostage-taking had become a feature of Turkey’s foreign policy. The most
prominent example is the American pastor Andrew Brunson, who, together with his
wife, ran a small Christian church in Izmir.
Brunson was
arrested in 2016, three months after the attempted coup in Turkey, on suspicion
of being “a threat to national security.” President Recep Tayyip Erdogan made
Turkey’s intentions plain. Concerning Turkish imam Fethullah Gülen, a
Pennsylvania resident who was accused of being behind the attempted coup,
Erdogan told the Americans: “You have another pastor in your hands. Give us
that pastor, and we will do what we can in the judiciary to give you this one.”
However,
Erdogan’s project backfired. With one eye on his support from the evangelicals,
President Donald Trump’s reaction was uncompromising. Sanctions were imposed on
two leading Turkish ministers, which caused the Turkish lira and Turkey’s
benchmark ten-year bond to hit a record low. In that year, the lira, already
groggy, fell almost 40 percent against the U.S. dollar. Consequently, pastor
Brunson was released.
Now, a new
opportunity has arisen. As a consequence of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, both
Finland and Sweden applied for NATO membership in May last year, but Turkey and
Hungary blocked their membership process. Turkey’s initial objection was that
they housed terrorist organizations, namely supporters of the Kurdish Kurdistan
Workers’ Party (PKK) and the Gülen movement.
This was
quickly elevated by Erdogan’s foreign policy advisor and spokesperson, Ibrahim
Kalin, to “a matter of national security.” After Erdogan’s electoral victory in
May, Kalin has been appointed head of the MIT, Turkey’s national security
organization, in a government reshuffle.
After the
NATO summit in Madrid in June last year, Finland and Sweden agreed in a
trilateral memorandum with Turkey to extend their full support to Ankara
against threats to Turkish national security and end their arms embargo.
Consequently, in March this year, the Turkish parliament formally approved
Finland’s membership, as did Hungary’s parliament.
However,
Turkey still has a bone to pick with Sweden. Turkey initially demanded the
extradition of eleven PKK members and ten Gulenists from Sweden, but after the
Madrid summit, the number ballooned to seventy-three. After an effigy of
Erdogan was strung up outside Stockholm town hall in January this year, Erdogan
increased the number to 130.
A second
grievance occurred in January: an anti-Islam provocateur was allowed to burn a
Quran near Turkey’s embassy in Stockholm. It happened again in June this year
outside a Stockholm mosque.
After the
Quran-burning incident in January, Erdogan made it clear, “If you do not show
respect to the religious beliefs of the Republic of Türkiye or Muslims, you
will not receive any support for NATO [membership] from us.”
In an
attempt to smooth the path for Sweden’s membership, NATO’s Secretary-General
Jens Stoltenberg brokered a bilateral Security Compact between Turkey and
Sweden at the NATO summit in Vilnius in July. Accordingly, Sweden reiterated it
would not provide support to the YPG/YPD (the PKK’s Syrian counterpart) and the
Gulenists.
In
addition, Sweden agreed to step up its economic cooperation with Turkey and
actively support efforts to “reinvigorate” Turkey’s EU accession process. The
sword of Damocles hanging over Sweden’s head is that its NATO membership is
dependent on ratification by the Turkish parliament, where it has stalled.
Turkey’s
Vice President Cevdet Yilmaz has told the Financial Times that Sweden must take
further “concrete steps” against terrorism to secure Ankara’s support for its
NATO bid. But the prospects of that happening are slim. Sweden’s Supreme Court
has blocked the extradition of members of the Gülen movement, which is a key
demand by Turkey for it to back Sweden’s NATO membership.
Nevertheless,
U.S. president Joe Biden has offered Turkey a deal. The Biden administration
will proceed with a $20 billion sale of F-16 fighter jets to Turkey as Turkish
officials apparently agreed in Vilnius to withdraw their objections to Sweden’s
NATO membership. The rub is that the sale has to be approved by Congress, which
is not positively inclined, particularly after Erdogan’s vocal support for
Hamas.
Erdogan has
made no bones about it. As he stated, “They are linking Sweden to the F-16s. …
In turn, we say if you have a Congress, we have a parliament.”
Now push
has come to shove, and the question is: who will blink first?
*Robert Ellis is a Turkey analyst and commentator. He
is also an international advisor at RIEAS (Research Institute for European and
American Studies) in Athens.
The National Interest
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