Ankara has legitimate security concerns, but the alliance should firmly reject Erdogan’s transactional diplomacy when it comes to Swedish accession.
A recent article by Halil Karaveli in Foreign Policy rightly points out that Turkey’s attempt at blackmail over Sweden’s accession to NATO is ultimately about extracting concessions from the United States. However, we disagree that “for Sweden to join NATO, the United States will have to cease financing and arming the PYD and YPG in Syria.” Turkey is overplaying its hand.
Given its position as the final holdout on Sweden’s and Finland’s accession to NATO, Turkey understandably wishes to push its advantage as long as NATO doesn’t push back. As Karaveli clearly explains, it would be unsafe and unwise to wager that Ankara’s position will soften after Turkey’s general elections in May.
NATO members’ efforts to ignore the issue for the sake of avoiding divisions among allies are pointless. It is time for NATO’s leadership and members to seriously engage Turkey on its disruptive and coercive behavior within the alliance, starting with holding Turkey to the agreement it made last June in Madrid with Sweden and Finland. This will require some political courage, including from key European capitals, in order to show broad agreement across NATO and present Turkey with a united front.
Turkey’s legitimate security concerns in Syria should be seriously addressed. However, this should be done through a separate track and in a way that also considers other NATO allies’ core security interests in the region. Turkey’s effort to link its agenda in northern Syria to NATO has undermined the alliance’s ability to focus on the greatest collective security challenge since World War II: Russia’s war in Ukraine.
**James Siebens is a fellow with the Reimagining U.S. Grand Strategy program at the Stimson Center, where he leads the Defense Strategy and Planning project, and Mathieu Droin is a visiting fellow in the Europe, Russia, and Eurasia program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
