Erdogan runs Putin's errands when he stops Sweden

  

Wolfgang Hansson

Published: Less than 2 hours ago  

This is a commenting text. Analysis and positions are the writer's. 

 

Turkey's authoritarian president seems more interested in maintaining his good relations with Vladimir Putin than with his NATO friends. Photo: Vyacheslav Prokofyev / AP  

COLUMNISTS  

Whether he does it consciously or not, Turkish President Erdogan is running the errands of his friend Vladimir Putin.  

By delaying or preventing NATO membership for Sweden and Finland, Russia's position is strengthened at the expense of the Western military alliance. 

One can think that there should be no question marks about whose side Erdogan is on in the Russia-Ukraine war, but that is exactly what it does.  

Turkey takes a strange stance in many ways, favoring NATO's currently biggest enemy. 

As a NATO member, Turkey should reasonably participate in the economic and political sanctions against Russia. Instead, Turkey has not only opted out of the sanctions but appears to be playing an active role as a transit country in funneling goods to Russia that Europe and the US have stopped. Then it is at best a mitigating circumstance that Turkey sells effective drones to Ukraine. 

Speak the same language of power  

While all flights between Europe and Russia have been stopped, connections between Russia and Turkey are fully open.  

Turkey has also become something of a "safe haven" for Russian oligarchs who have been able to let both their luxury yachts and money take refuge there. 

Turkey's authoritarian president seems more interested in maintaining his good relations with Vladimir Putin than with his NATO friends.  

The two have a very special relationship based on mutual benefit and that they both speak the same language of power. While Putin wants to restore the Soviet Union's great power position, Erdogan wants to consolidate his position as an increasingly powerful regional leader.  

He sees not only dangers in a new security policy order in Europe and the Middle East, but also opportunities for himself and Turkey. 

Adds hook legs 

In any other way, it cannot be interpreted that he is undermining the position of the military alliance of which he is a member. 

With Sweden and Finland as members, NATO's defense around the Baltic Sea and the Baltics is strengthened. Russia will find it even more difficult to expand eastward if Putin harbors such ambitions. 

Instead of helping to strengthen the alliance, Erdogan is putting a hook on it, thus favoring Putin's and Russia's security policy interests. One of the demands Putin made when he requested the West to agree to a new security policy order a little over a year ago was a ban on Finland and Sweden joining NATO.  

Erdogan's latest statement that Turkey may say yes to Finland but no to Sweden is another way to put pressure on Sweden to hand over what Erdogan calls terrorists. But also on other NATO countries such as the United States to approve the sale of the American fighter jet F-16 and meet Turkey in other areas. 

His position is threatened  

While the governments of Sweden and Finland try to cool down the tone in the debate after the burning of the Koran and the doll representing Erdogan that was hung upside down outside the city hall in Stockholm, Erdogan is doing what he can to keep the conflict alive.  

He does it for purely selfish reasons. May 14 is the election in Turkey and Erdogan's previously strong position at home is threatened by an economic crisis with inflation of 64.3 percent in 2022.  

His chance to be re-elected is to single out enemies of the Turkish state. Here, the terrorist-branded Kurdish organization PKK fits in perfectly, but also Kurdish groups in Syria and abroad who are working for the formation of their own state, Kurdistan.  

By stopping Sweden's and Finland's NATO membership with reference to the countries being a haven for Kurdish "terrorists", he hopes to win support in an electorate where the fight against terrorism is high on the agenda for many. 

Then it will be a new situation 

Therefore, Sweden and Finland cannot expect to have their NATO applications approved until after the Turkish election at the earliest. 

Only if Erdogan is re-elected will he be confident enough to be able to do a toss and say yes. Although it may take time.  

If, against the odds, he is not re-elected, we have a completely new situation where it is difficult to know what will happen and what the timetable will be for Swedish and Finnish membership in such cases.  

But while Erdogan is using Sweden and Finland as pawns to secure his own re-election, he is also acting as a proxy for Putin.