WASHINGTON — When President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey threatened this month to dam NATO membership for Finland and Sweden, Western officers had been exasperated — however not shocked.
Inside an alliance that operates by consensus, the Turkish strongman has come to be seen as one thing of a stickup artist. In 2009, he blocked the appointment of a brand new NATO chief from Denmark, complaining that the nation was too tolerant of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad and too sympathetic to “Kurdish terrorists” primarily based in Turkey. It took hours of cajoling by Western leaders, and a face-to-face promise from President Barack Obama that NATO would appoint a Turk to a management place, to fulfill Mr. Erdogan.
After a rupture in relations between Turkey and Israel the following 12 months, Mr. Erdogan prevented the alliance from working with the Jewish state for six years. A number of years later, Mr. Erdogan delayed for months a NATO plan to fortify Jap European nations towards Russia, once more citing Kurdish militants and demanding that the alliance declare ones working in Syria to be terrorists. In 2020, Mr. Erdogan despatched a gas-exploration ship backed by fighter jets near Greek waters, inflicting France to ship ships in help of Greece, additionally a NATO member.
Now the Turkish chief is again within the position of obstructionist, and is as soon as once more invoking the Kurds, as he fees that Sweden and Finland sympathize with the Kurdish militants he has made his primary enemy.
“These nations have nearly turn out to be guesthouses for terrorist organizations,” he mentioned this month. “It isn’t attainable for us to be in favor.”
Mr. Erdogan’s stance is a reminder of a long-festering downside for NATO, which presently has 30 members. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine could have given the alliance a brand new sense of mission, however NATO should nonetheless cope with an authoritarian chief prepared to make use of his leverage to realize political factors at house by blocking consensus — not less than for a time.
It’s a state of affairs that performs to the benefit of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, who has grown friendlier with Mr. Erdogan in recent times. For the Russian chief, the rejection of Swedish and Finnish admission into NATO could be a major victory.
The quandary could be less complicated had been it not for Turkey’s significance to the alliance. The nation joined NATO in 1952 after aligning with the West towards the Soviet Union; Turkey provides the alliance an important strategic place on the intersection of Europe and Asia, astride each the Center East and the Black Sea. It hosts a significant U.S. air base the place American nuclear weapons are saved, and Mr. Erdogan has blocked Russian warships headed towards Ukraine.
However below Mr. Erdogan, Turkey has more and more turn out to be an issue to be managed. As prime minister after which as president, he has tilted his nation away from Europe whereas training an authoritarian and populist model of Islamist politics, particularly since a failed coup try in 2016.
He has bought a complicated missile system from Russia that NATO officers name a risk to their built-in protection programs, and in 2019 he mounted a navy incursion to battle Kurds in northern Syria who had been aiding the struggle towards the Islamic State with U.S. help.
“In my 4 years there, it was very often 27 towards one,” mentioned Ivo H. Daalder, a U.S. ambassador to NATO in the course of the Obama administration, when the alliance had 28 members.
Mr. Erdogan’s objections to the membership of Sweden and Finland have even renewed questions on whether or not NATO may be higher off with out Turkey.
An opinion essay this month that was co-written by Joseph I. Lieberman, a former impartial U.S. senator from Connecticut, argued that Mr. Erdogan’s Turkey would flunk the alliance’s requirements for democratic governance in potential new member states. The essay, revealed by The Wall Road Journal, warned that Ankara’s insurance policies, together with a coziness with Mr. Putin, had undermined NATO’s pursuits and that the alliance ought to discover methods of ejecting Turkey.
“Turkey is a member of NATO, however below Mr. Erdogan it not subscribes to the values that underpin this nice alliance,” wrote Mr. Lieberman and Mark D. Wallace, the chief govt of the Turkish Democracy Challenge, a gaggle important of Mr. Erdogan.
Some members of Congress have mentioned as a lot. “Turkey below Erdogan mustn’t and can’t be seen as an ally,” Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey, the highest Democrat on the Senate Overseas Relations Committee, mentioned after Turkey’s 2019 incursion into Syria.
However NATO is a navy alliance, and Turkey, with the second-largest military within the group, a complicated protection business and its essential geographic place, performs a significant position.
Western officers say that Turkey would solely trigger extra issues as a resentful NATO outsider — and one that would align itself extra intently with Russia.
“Turkey has undermined its personal picture,” mentioned Alper Coskun, a former Turkish diplomat who’s now a senior fellow on the Carnegie Endowment for Worldwide Peace. However, he added, “it’s nonetheless a important member of the alliance.”
As soon as once more, the query is what’s going to mollify Mr. Erdogan and guarantee his help for admitting Sweden and Finland.
President Biden underscored U.S. help for the transfer when he hosted the 2 nations’ leaders on the White Home this month and praised a bigger NATO as a verify towards Russian energy. “Biden took an especially uncovered, high-visibility place by inviting them to Washington,” mentioned James F. Jeffrey, a U.S. ambassador to Turkey in the course of the Obama administration.
Most analysts consider that Mr. Erdogan is not going to in the end block the accession of Sweden and Finland, however that he needs to focus on Turkey’s personal safety issues and make home political beneficial properties earlier than elections in his nation subsequent 12 months.
Mr. Erdogan is principally involved with Sweden’s longtime help for the Kurdistan Employees’ Occasion, or P.Okay.Okay., which seeks an impartial Kurdish state on territory partly inside Turkey’s borders.
The P.Okay.Okay., which has attacked nonmilitary targets and killed civilians in Turkey, is outlawed in that nation and is designated by each america and the European Union as a terrorist group, though some governments, together with Sweden, view it extra sympathetically as a Kurdish nationalist motion.
The USA has additionally backed its affiliated fighters in Syria, the Y.P.G., or Individuals’s Safety Units, who helped to battle the Islamic State and whom Mr. Erdogan attacked in his 2019 incursion into the nation.
The Turkish president needs the Y.P.G. to be designated as a terrorist group as properly.
Mr. Erdogan accuses each Finland and Sweden of harboring followers of Fethullah Gulen, a Turkish cleric residing in U.S. exile, whom he blames for the 2016 coup. Turkey is requesting the extradition of roughly 35 individuals it says are concerned with Kurdish separatists or Mr. Gulen.
Mr. Erdogan additionally objects to Swedish and Finnish arms embargoes towards his nation, which had been imposed after the 2019 incursion into Syria. Sweden is already discussing lifting the embargo given present occasions in Ukraine.
Some analysts say that Mr. Erdogan’s authorities views the P.Okay.Okay. a lot the best way Washington noticed Al Qaeda 20 years in the past, and that the West can’t dismiss the issues if it hopes to do enterprise with Turkey.
Biden administration officers downplay the standoff and anticipate Mr. Erdogan to achieve a compromise with Finland and Sweden. Turkish officers met in Ankara with Finnish and Swedish counterparts for a number of hours final week.
Julianne Smith, the U.S. ambassador to NATO, mentioned in an interview that “this seems to be a problem that they’ve with Sweden and Finland, so we’ll depart it of their arms.” She added that america would offer help if wanted.
Showing with Finland’s international minister in Washington on Friday, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken mentioned he was “assured that we are going to work by way of this course of swiftly, and that issues will transfer ahead with each nations.”
Emre Peker, a London-based director for Europe on the Eurasia Group, a personal consulting agency, mentioned that he didn’t consider that Mr. Erdogan was looking for concessions from Washington. He expressed confidence that Turkey may work out an settlement with Sweden and Finland with the mediation of the NATO secretary basic, Jens Stoltenberg.
Mr. Erdogan’s primary priorities are getting his nation’s safety issues about Kurdish separatists heard and getting the arms embargoes lifted, Mr. Peker mentioned.
Some American analysts are skeptical. Eric S. Edelman, a former U.S. ambassador to Turkey and Finland, warned that Mr. Erdogan might be looking for to curry favor with Mr. Putin — or not less than ease the anger in Moscow over the sale of deadly drones to Ukraine’s navy by a personal Turkish firm.
“He has this very difficult relationship with Putin that he has to keep up,” Mr. Edelman mentioned. “It is a great way of throwing somewhat bone to Putin — ‘I’m nonetheless helpful to you.’”
Others consider the Turkish chief needs a payoff from Washington. Mr. Erdogan is indignant that america denied Turkey entry to the F-35 stealth fighter after his 2017 buy of the Russian S-400 missile system. Turkey is now lobbying as an alternative to purchase enhanced F-16 fighters however has met stiff resistance in Congress from the likes of Mr. Menendez.
Mr. Erdogan may be looking for presidential consideration. He had a pleasant rapport with President Donald J. Trump, however Mr. Biden has saved his distance.
“It is a man who must be at heart stage,” mentioned Mr. Daalder, the previous U.S. ambassador to NATO. “It is a option to say: ‘Hey, I’m nonetheless right here. You’ll want to take note of my points.’”
Mr. Peker believes that an settlement will be negotiated between Turkey and the Nordic nations earlier than a NATO summit in Madrid subsequent month, which might permit for the accession protocols to be signed there.
Extra doubtless, some analysts say, Mr. Biden should make a nod towards Mr. Erdogan in Madrid to clinch his assent, as Mr. Obama needed to do at a NATO summit in 2009 to safe the appointment of Anders Fogh Rasmussen as secretary basic.
At a chat hosted by the Council on Overseas Relations final week, Consultant Adam Smith, Democrat of Washington and the chairman of the Home Armed Providers Committee, prompt that the stakes of Swedish and Finnish membership had been nice sufficient to warrant direct U.S. involvement.
“We have to sit down and we have to lower a deal,” Mr. Smith mentioned. “And we have to get aggressive about it, like now.”
Michael Crowley reported from Washington, and Steven Erlanger from Brussels. Eric Schmitt contributed reporting from Washington.
Might 30, 2022
An earlier model of this text misstated when France despatched ships in help of Greece. It was in 2020, not 2019.
