Sweden to join NATO: How did Turkey agree and what does the expansion mean?

NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, is fast expanding. In just over a year, it is getting two new members and talks for a third are on the cards. After Finland joined the alliance in April 2023, after being neutral, now Sweden is set to be part of the bloc. Ukraine’s NATO membership is up for discussion at the NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, which starts on Tuesday.

Sweden had applied to join NATO alongside Finland. However, while Finland got a go-ahead from all member states, Sweden’s bid was blocked by Turkey and Hungary last year.

But now Turkey has decided to withdraw objections to Sweden joining the alliance. So what changed?

What happened in Vilnius?

NATO secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg announced on Monday that Turkey had agreed to back Sweden’s bid to join NATO.

After talks in Vilnius with Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Swedish prime minister Ulf Kristersson, Stoltenberg said that the membership bid would be forwarded to parliament in Ankara.

“This is a historic day,” the NATO chief said late Monday as the announced the agreement following days of intensive meetings.

Kristersson said, “I am very happy, it is a good day for Sweden.”

After Erodgan, Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban is expected to take a similar step.

What made Erdogan change his mind?

For months, Turkey was blocking Sweden’s application. A member state has the power to veto any new country from joining the group.

Erodgan has been seeking advanced American fighter jets and a path toward membership in the European Union. The White House has expressed support for both but publicly insisted that the issues were not related to Sweden’s membership in NATO, reports The Associated Press (AP).

“First, open the way for Turkey’s membership in the European Union, and then we will open it for Sweden, just as we had opened it for Finland,” Erdogan had said in a televised media appearance on Monday before departing for the NATO summit in Lithuania.

After Turkey came on board to allow Sweden to join the bloc, US president Joe Biden who arrived in Vilnius on Monday evening thanked Erdogan for committing to transmit Sweden’s ascension protocol to Turkey’s Grand National Assembly for “swift ratification”.

The reference to enhancing Turkey’s defence capability was a nod to Biden’s commitment to help the country acquire new F-16 fighter jets, according to an administration official.

The Biden administration has backed Turkey’s desire to buy 40 new F-16s as well as modernisation kits from the US. It’s a move some in Congress, most notably Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Menendez, have opposed over Turkey blocking NATO membership for Sweden, its human rights record and other concerns, reports AP.

The official, who was not authorised to comment and spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the White House had been “cautiously hopeful” but not certain it could get Erdogan to come around before the summit. US secretary of state Antony Blinken and national security adviser Jake Sullivan worked the phones in recent days, speaking with Erdogan as well as senior Turkish and Swedish officials.

Also read: Why Ukraine’s NATO membership seems out of reach

Why were Turkey and Hungary blocking Sweden’s membership?

After Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Sweden and Finland decided to ditch their military non-alignment policies and join NATO to ensure their security. After initial objections, Turkey gave a go-ahead to Finland last April.
But it had opposed Sweden’s membership bid accusing Stockholm of harbouring Kurdish activists Ankara regards as “terrorists”. According to Turkey, Sweden was not taking its security concerns seriously.

Protests in the Swedish capital, which included anti-Isalm activities like the burning of the Quran, also angered Ankara, which said they were hate crimes. But Sweden had maintained that they were covered by freedom of speech laws.

Hungary followed Turkey’s lead. It said that Sweden had a hostile attitude towards Budapest and was also miffed about Stockholm’s criticism of Orban and the perceived erosion of the rule of law. Unlike Turkey, Hungary did not have a list of demands but said that grievances needed to be addressed before it can ratify Sweden’s accession to NATO, according to a Reuters report.

On Monday, Stoltenberg said that Turkey and Sweden had addressed the “legitimate security concerns” and as a result, Sweden had amended its constitution, changed its laws, expanded its counter-terrorism operation against the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party) and resumed arms exports to Ankara, reports the BBC.

Asked about opposition from Budapest, the NATO chief said that “Hungary has made it clear that they will not be the last to ratify”. “I think that problem will be solved,” he added.

What does NATO expansion mean?

With Sweden joining the bloc, NATO will now have 32 members. The outcome is a victory for Biden, who has touted the expansion of the bloc as an example of how Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has backfired on Moscow.

The NATO countries have each other’s back if either of them are attacked. The alliance was originally formed to block Soviet expansion into Europe after World War II. After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, many Eastern European nations joined NATO. But Russia did not want the bloc close to its border and hence has been opposed to Ukraine’s request to join.

After the invasion of Ukraine, Finland joined the bloc and NATO has its presence not in Ukraine but in another of Russia’s borders.

Now if Russia attacks any of the member states, it will be taking on NATO. The bloc has a plan in place for countering the Kremlin. It is looking to massively increase the number of its forces, which will be ready for action within 30 days, to 300,000 troops from the current 40,000, according to the report in the BBC. This will be up for discussion at the summit.

Malcolm Chalmers, deputy director of the think tank, the Royal United Services Institute, told the BBC, “When the Soviet Union collapsed, the threat of a major war disappeared almost entirely. But the 2014 annexation of Crimea, and the current Ukraine war, means the threat is real again.”

With inputs from agencies