uAt 10:10 p.m. on Monday, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg announced a historic decision: “Sweden will become a full member of the alliance.” For almost five hours, he had previously discussed with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson, interrupted by a conversation Erdogan with EU Council President Charles Michel. In the end, the Turkish President agreed to forward the Swedish accession protocol to his parliament and ensure its speedy ratification. Since Parliament is about to go on its summer recess, from which it will not return until the beginning of October, this is likely to drag on for some time. However, there is no question that it will happen, because Erdogan’s AKP party is loyal to him, and the opposition supports the move anyway.
At first it didn’t look like an agreement. Because before his departure for Vilnius, Erdogan had suddenly linked Sweden’s NATO accession to his country’s admission to the European Union. “First you should open the way for Turkey to the EU, then (…) we will open the way for Sweden to NATO,” he said. He will convey this message to the leaders there. After a phone call with Biden on Sunday, the Turkish President’s Office announced that it expected “a message of open and strong support from the leading EU states and the EU leadership” during the meeting. Until then, Ankara had made ratification of Sweden’s accession conditional on the country taking more decisive action against Kurdish terrorists. Erdoğan said that Stockholm “has taken some steps in the right direction by changing its anti-terrorist legislation”. However, these steps were countered by the fact that “supporters of the PKK/PYD/YPG continue to demonstrate openly and praise terrorism”.
New impetus between the EU and Türkiye?
But all of this turned out to be theater thunder on Monday evening. In a joint declaration, Sweden committed itself to long-term cooperation with Ankara in combating terrorism, with annual ministerial meetings. Stoltenberg agreed to set up the new post of anti-terrorist coordinator. On the EU side, Stockholm pledged that it will “actively support measures to revitalize Turkey’s EU accession process, including modernization of the EU Customs Union and visa liberalisation”. These have been Turkish concerns for a long time – but they by no means achieve their goal. Following his long-planned talks with Erdogan, EU Council President Michel said opportunities had been explored to boost EU-Turkey cooperation. In doing so, he was able to refer to the conclusions of the most recent European Council, which commissioned foreign policy chief Borrell to draw up a “strategic” and “forward-looking report”.
The late-night breakthrough was good news for NATO – after the diplomats of the member countries had still not been able to find a common language on Ukraine’s accession prospects. This is what the heads of state and government will have to deal with when they arrive in Vilnius on Tuesday morning – which is exactly what the alliance had actually wanted to avoid. As early as 2008, at the Bucharest summit, the leaders themselves lent a hand – and decided to offer Ukraine (and Georgia) the prospect of membership without linking this to a concrete plan. That still weighs heavily on the coalition’s stomach – so heavy that it is now wrestling again with how to describe the country’s prospect of accession.
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