June 23, 2023 | Foreign Policy
Will Erdogan Finally Ratify Sweden’s NATO Accession? No One Knows.
It is now a waiting game—and that’s how it should be.
June 23, 2023 | Foreign Policy
Will Erdogan Finally Ratify Sweden’s NATO Accession? No One Knows.
It is now a waiting game—and that’s how it should be.
Excerpt
The expectation that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will finally agree to support Sweden’s bid to join NATO has gone from “It’ll definitely happen after Erdogan gets reelected” to “Who knows—maybe?” The simple answer is that we don’t know, and, more importantly, Erdogan is in no particular rush to get it done. Washington and other NATO allies should temper their expectations and simply realize that there is not much more they can do to get Erdogan to play ball. It is now a waiting game—and that’s how it should be.
Ahead of NATO’s 2022 Madrid summit, Turkey lifted its objections to admitting Finland and Sweden into the trans-Atlantic alliance and signed a joint memorandum with the two Nordic countries that outlined Helsinki’s and Stockholm’s intentions to take into consideration Turkey’s “security concerns.” Most officials at this point believed that NATO expansion was a done deal.
Sinan Ciddi is a non-resident senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), where he contributes to FDD’s Turkey Program and Center on Military and Political Power (CMPP). Follow Sinan on Twitter @SinanCiddi. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.