Turkish President Recep Tayyip has called for a revival of Turkey’s accession talks to the EU in return for his approval of Sweden’s admission to NATO. Before leaving for the NATO summit, Erdogan said to the EU countries in Istanbul on Monday: “First smooth the way for Turkey into the European Union, then we smooth the way for Sweden, just as we smoothed it for Finland.”
The statement comes as a surprise. So far, Erdogan had cited Sweden’s insufficient action against “terrorist organizations” from a Turkish perspective as the main reason for Turkey’s blockade of NATO accession.
In view of the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine, Sweden and Finland applied for NATO membership in May 2022. Finland was welcomed as the 31st member of the alliance in early April, while Sweden continued to lack approval from Turkey and Hungary.
Turkey, Finland and Sweden had actually already come to an agreement at the NATO summit in Madrid last summer. In the Spanish capital, they signed a memorandum in which the two Nordic countries addressed Turkey’s concerns from the outset.
However, Erdogan has now stressed again that, in his view, Sweden must continue to fulfill the conditions in the memorandum in order to make progress on NATO accession.
The EU had already started accession talks with Turkey in 2005. However, these were put on hold again a few years ago because Brussels saw unacceptable developments in the area of the rule of law.
Erdogan was re-elected president at the end of May after 20 years in power. The election campaign was considered unfair, partly because the media is largely under government control and political opponents are in prison.