Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan will hold talks with the leaders of Finland and Sweden on Tuesday, the day before the alliance’s leaders meet for a summit in Madrid, Spain.
Turkey is opposing the NATO membership of the two Nordic states, arguing that they have failed to take steps to deal with terrorism and threats to its security. The talks have been called on the request of the secretary general of the alliance, who will also attend the negotiations.
“Our participation in this summit does not mean that we will step back from our position,” Ibrahim Kalın, Erdoğan’s spokesman and chief foreign policy adviser, told Habertürk television on Sunday, the state-run Anadolu news agency reported. “We have brought negotiations to a certain point. It is not possible for us to take a step back here.”
Diplomatic pressure on Turkey is building for it to drop its objections, which are supported by veto rights in NATO. The alliance’s leaders, led by U.S. President Joe Biden, are strongly backing the membership of Finland and Sweden to demonstrate increased Western solidarity and strength in the face of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Turkey, which has close relations with Moscow, has previously stated that the NATO summit does not represent a deadline to agree on the two countries’ accession.
Turkey says Sweden and Finland are far from meeting its expectations of tackling the threat posed to its security by the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which is battling the Turkish military for autonomy for the Kurds of Turkey, and an affiliate in Syria. Ankara says both countries harbour and even support the militants. They deny the charges.
Officials from the three countries have already held two rounds of face-to-face talks at deputy foreign minister level to try to reach a deal.
NATO’s leaders will meet in Madrid on Wednesday and Thursday. Turkey, which joined NATO in 1952, has the alliance’s second-largest standing army and has participated in numerous NATO missions, including in Afghanistan.
But Erdoğan’s government replaced many pro-NATO generals with military officers favouring a more Eurasian perspective for Turkey following an attempted military coup in 2016. Erdoğan’s anti-Western rhetoric has since increased, as has his cooperation with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
(This story was updated to correct date of Turkey joining NATO to 1952 in the penultimate paragraph.)
Ahval