The NATO creep has corrupted Sweden

 The NATO creep has corrupted Sweden

Welcome to a world where rights are seen as problems

Petter Larsson

This is a cultural article that is part of Aftonbladet's opinion journalism.

Updated 09:23 | Published 2023-07-10 23:02

Erdogan and Kristersson at a meeting in Ankara last November.

Erdogan and Kristersson at a meeting in Ankara last November.

Photo: Burhan Ozbilici / AP

The Turkish regime now promises to approve Sweden as a NATO member.

It's nothing to cheer about. The price is high.

We have seen a year of Swedish foot-scratching and ever-increasing Turkish demands. With his repeated assurances that the situation is hopeful, the Minister of Foreign Affairs has increasingly come to resemble a kind of Baghdad Billström. On Monday, it was followed by further concessions.

The Swedish government must now actively support Turkey in the country's attempt to become a member of the EU, a requirement thrown in at the last moment, possibly as a pretext to switch sides in front of domestic opinion. In essence, the requirement is logical. Since the attack on Ukraine has meant that Russia has become an international pariah for the foreseeable future, Turkey has lost its opportunity to threaten the US and the EU with getting closer to Russia. Only the west remains. But the fact that Sweden promises to participate is a direct embarrassment. As is well known, Turkey is light years away from fulfilling the Union's demands for respect for democracy, the rule of law and human rights.

The Kristersson government also promises to step up intergovernmental cooperation against so-called terrorism to "a new level". It should be interpreted as the Swedish security police and other authorities helping the Turkish security service MIT – notorious for both torture and illegal kidnappings in other countries – to get access to PKK supporters and other political opponents. Thus, the years of humiliation that followed the Madrid agreement have a continuation that is ominous both for the Swedish-Kurdish population and for the future political refugees from Turkey.

The urgency is Swedish politicians' own invention.

Swedish politicians have partly brought themselves into this situation of extortion, and here an old truth is illustrated: that of the danger of haste. In all negotiations, you end up at a disadvantage if you are pressed for time and the other party has all the time in the world to evaluate, make new demands and obstruct.

The urgency is Swedish politicians' own invention. The bourgeoisie was probably driven by the lure of confronting NATO opponents with a fait accompli in a way that brings to mind Naomi Klein's concept of the shock doctrine and by the hope of making NATO an election issue. The Social Democrats ducked tactically by abandoning the freedom of alliance. It cannot be ruled out that the outcome would have been different if it had not been an election year.

But at least since the Russian blitzkrieg against Ukraine failed and turned into a war of attrition, there has been no objective reason to rush, because the military threat to Sweden has decreased, not increased. It was well known. "For some time to come, Russia is militarily weakened by the war of aggression against Ukraine. Russia therefore has limited opportunities to carry out a conventional military attack against other countries", it was already stated in the security policy analysis that was the basis for the decision to apply for membership.

That the stress and concessions were driven more by domestic political prestige than by any imminent military emergency only makes them more tragic.

As a description of the honorable member state of Turkey, it sounds like a parody, but we who lived in the Western European peace bubble have been able to stick with the image of NATO as a peace-loving club

But the deeper truth that has been revealed is different: the illusions about NATO have collapsed. On its website, the military alliance presents its deterrence strategy as a means to "uphold the principles and values it stands for - individual freedom, democracy, human rights and legal certainty".

As a description of the honorable member state of Turkey, it sounds like a parody, but we who lived in the Western European peace bubble have been able to stick with the image of NATO as a peace-loving club of like-minded democracies. We were not the victims of either NATO's illegal bombing of Serbia, the extension of the no-fly zone to warfare in Libya, the disastrously failed occupation of Afghanistan, or the US war of aggression against Iraq and the abuses of the war on terror.

But now we stand here, waist deep in real politics, where a distant dictatorship can influence both our foreign policy and our domestic legislation. We are forced to realize that intergovernmental cooperation is driven by national interests and is rarely characterized by any general goodwill or excessive respect for human rights.

And this, moreover, with a spineless government that even before we were members allowed Sweden to be morally corrupted - I can't find a better word for when ideas that only a few years ago would have been unacceptable were implemented on an assembly line. The meaning of the government's appointment of NATO membership as the "supreme value" of foreign policy has been that other values have been subordinated.

They have ennobled Turkey into a "democracy" and turned yesterday's heroes in the Kurdish YPG and PYD into today's terrorists. The arms export freeze to Turkey, introduced when Turkish forces attacked these very Kurdish organizations in an attack contrary to international law, has also been lifted.

Fortunately, the law and the courts have largely put an end to Erdogan's requests to have the heads of his political opponents delivered, but not completely. On December 1 last year, Mahmut Tat was deported, convicted in Turkey against his denial of collusion with the PKK. It is a unique case. As far as is known, neither Sweden nor other EU countries have previously deported people convicted of terrorist crimes to Turkey, as the risk of them being tortured is too great. In the Turkish media, attention was paid to the deportation precisely as a Swedish concession.

Shortly afterwards, Foreign Minister Billström sat on Turkish television and hinted that it would be a crime to wave PKK flags. The police pulled the trigger by deliberately prohibiting Koran burning in defiance of the law. And recently, Minister of Justice Gunnar Strömmer has hinted that freedom of expression may be a bit too broad after all.

Yes, welcome to NATO, welcome to a reality where rights and the rule of law are mostly seen as obstacles.