With Turkish general elections in May, Sweden's NATO accession hangs in the balance

By: Marko Cem Zerunyan: Staff Editor

Less than a year after applying for membership, Finland has achieved accession, leaving behind its co-applicant Sweden. Amid the war in Ukraine and rising geopolitical tensions, the significance of Nordic membership to NATO is unquestionable. However, in the lead-up to the Turkish elections in May, the question of Sweden's accession has evolved into an issue far beyond NATO membership and has highlighted major concerns over Sweden's unstable political process behind foreign policy decision-making.

In late March 2023, the Hungarian and Turkish legislatures ratified bills to accept Finland's entry into NATO. Finland's entry into the alliance caps off the fastest-ever accession process for a NATO applicant. Sweden had jointly applied for NATO membership alongside Sweden in May 2022.

In contrast to Finland, the prospect of Swedish accession does not look clear for at least the imminent future. Although Sweden's parliament voted on March 23 with a sweeping majority to join NATO and confirmed the country's retraction from a years-long policy of military non-alignment, Hungary and Turkiye have blocked their accession into the bloc.

On the Hungarian side, concerns about Stockholm’s criticisms of the rule of law under Prime Minister Viktor Orban have held back parliamentary ratification. On the Turkish side, tensions are higher, with the Erdogan government holding grievances regarding Sweden's criticism of human rights abuses and democratic standards in Turkiye. Moreover, recent events of Koran and effigy burning have driven Ankara to object to Sweden's standard of free speech. As Turkiye readies itself for its presidential and parliamentary elections on May 14, the country's Grand National Assembly has entered recess as of April 7, delaying the possibility of ratifying Sweden's accession into NATO for at least one month.

The Legal Process of NATO Accession

The strategic case for Finnish and Swedish NATO membership is not difficult to justify. Finland's frontier with Russia is close to 1000 miles and is in the proximity of the Kola peninsula, which hosts Russia's Northern Fleet and nuclear submarines. Furthermore, Finnish accession allows for cooperation with NATO member Estonia, essentially consolidating control over maritime access to St. Petersburg. As for Sweden, the island of Gotland in the Baltic Sea is a major logistical and strategic hub for NATO defense policy. Indeed, using NATO defense capabilities, the integration of Gotland would inhibit Russia's "anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) bubble" around Kaliningrad and the Suwalki Gap.

But NATO accession is not merely a strategic question. Joining the Alliance is a formal process under the 1949 North Atlantic Treaty. Article 10 of the Treaty details the legal basis for becoming a member of the Alliance: “The Parties may, by unanimous agreement, invite any other European State in a position to further the principles of this Treaty and to contribute to the security of the North Atlantic area to accede to this Treaty.” Also referred to as NATO’s “Open Door Policy,” Article 10 implements the Alliance's enlargement strategy, which most recently resulted in North Macedonia's accession. The enlargement strategy aims to foster regional stability through democratic, economic and security integration in the Euro-Atlantic area.

The enlargement policy enforces a soft law requirement in that NATO allies judge whether aspirants fulfill the criteria set out in the 1995 Study on NATO enlargement. Although not inscribed in the text of Article 1o, the 1995 Study is enforced through dialogue between NATO and aspirants at summits that allow member states to conclude the merits of admitting the aspirant. Among the key criteria under this study are "a democratic political system, a market economy, fair treatment of minority populations, commitment to peaceful resolution of disputes, ability to make meaningful contributions to NATO operations, and a commitment to democratic civil-military relations and structures."

In Finland and Sweden's case, within one month of receiving official letters of application from both states, NATO formally triggered the membership invitation process on June 29, 2022. Between the application and formal invitation, Sweden, Finland, and Turkey negotiated a memorandum requiring Sweden and Finland to commit to tackling terrorist activities, including those by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party. In this regard, not only was the speed of the invitation unprecedented, but NATO forewent the standard stage of "intensified dialogue" with aspirants, likely due to the strategic urgency as well as the strong democratic systems in Finland and Sweden.

The final stage of the process covers the "accession protocols," which lays out the aspirants' commitment to political, legal, and military obligations. The protocols are then subject to each NATO member's ratification to amend the Treaty — a process which is reliant on each State's system for treaty ratification. This is precisely where Hungary and Turkiye have stymied Swedish accession, stalling on ratification of Sweden's protocols while ratifying Finland's.

Sweden's Path to Ratification from Turkish Parliament

The main reasons for Finland's ability to accelerate ahead of Sweden toward accession was the fact that Finland has a much more flexible and swift foreign policy decision-making system. Notably, in January 2023, Finland swiftly lifted its arms embargo from 2020 with Turkey, reinstating defense trading between the two states. In contrast, Sweden harbors a greater number of accused terrorists wanted by Turkiye, with Turkish president Erdogan persisting on his demands for the extradition of 120 people from Stockholm while not subjecting Finland to similar pressures. Also important, Finland has had fewer controversies such as the Koran burning in front of the Turkish embassy in Stockholm.

In Sweden, a rigid political and legal process has hampered diplomatic relations with Turkiye at each point of disagreement. The biggest point of contention between the two has been over Sweden's refusal to accommodate Ankara's demands for the extradition of suspected terrorists. Although a focal point of the trilateral agreement between Sweden, Finland, and Turkey from June 2022 was a commitment to fulfill Turkey's extradition requests, Sweden's asylum and extradition policy is subject to judicial review. As such , the Swedish government has been forced to comply with rulings from its courts and National Migration Agency likewise.

In December 2022, the Swedish Supreme Court issued a decision denying the extradition of Bülent Keneş, a Turkish journalist who is accused of participation in the failed 2016 coup attempt by Erdoğan's government. Among the court's reasons for its judgment were that the charges against Keneş did not correspond to crimes in Sweden and that there was “risk of persecution based on this person’s political beliefs.” Shortly after, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu criticized the court’s decision as a “very negative” development.

Furthermore, domestic political turmoil has made negotiating with Ankara difficult. During a crisis over a motion of no confidence against Justice Minister Morgan Johansson, an independent parliamentarian named Amineh Kakabaveh emerged as the deciding figure in rendering the motion's outcome only one vote short of passing. Karabaveh, who is of Iranian-Kurdish origin and whom Erdoğan has referred to as a terrorist, has been critical in the past of the Swedish government’s negotiations with Turkey on the issue of Kurds. Ultimately, she arranged a trade-off with the Johansson-led government to abstain from voting in the motion in exchange for the governing Social Democrats to preserve their November 2021 agreement “to deepen their cooperation with the Partiya Yekîtiya Demokrat.” Yet when the Social Democrats were replaced by a more hard-on-crime, right-leaning government only months after this, the deal brokered with Karabaveh was abandoned. The newly arriving Moderate-led government initiated a prompt dismantlement of cooperation with the Partiya Yekîtiya Demokrat — partially in a move to appease Ankara. Swedish Foreign Minister Tobias Billstrom had commented to Swedish Radio, "There is too close a connection between [Partiya Yekîtiya Demokrat] and the PKK ... for it to be good for the relationship between us and Turkey."

Sweden's new government has passed stricter legislation on terrorism that will enter into force in June—when the results of the Turkish election will be settled. Though this legal reform was a long time coming, it is the Swedish government's final step in persuading Turkey to ratify NATO accession. In particular, the reforms will facilitate the Swedish government's ability to address extradition requests without lengthy judicial review. In response to this development, Ibrahim Kalin, Erdogan's chief foreign policy advisor, praised Sweden's legislative developments and said that the decision to delay accession until after the elections was precisely for the Turkish government to observe how the reforms are enforced once they enter into force in June.

Perhaps the only other grievance still persisting between Turkiye and Sweden concerns the Koran burning controversy, which is also subject to some rigidity from Sweden's judicature. In early April, Sweden's Supreme Administrative Court struck down a police ordinance to ban two anti-Islamic protests in February after the initial Koran-burning demonstrations in January. In balancing the right to free speech and demonstration against national security, judge Eva-Lotta Hedin stated the "police authority did not have sufficient support for its decisions." The Swedish police had announced its non-authorization of the demonstrations on the basis that the January protest had made Sweden "a higher priority target for attacks."

Conclusion

While Finland has finalized the Article 10 process to become a member under the NATO treaty, domestic political processes, legal decisions, legislative reform, and diplomatic schism have stalled Sweden's accession until mid-May. Sweden's immediate future with NATO may hinge on the results of the tightly contested upcoming Turkish elections, although many experts believe Turkey will ratify Sweden in the summer notwithstanding the winner of the elections. According to Paul Levin, director of Stockholm University’s Institute for Turkish Studies, the growing consensus in Sweden has been that the National Alliance, Turkey's main opposition coalition, would be open to quickly facilitating ratification for Sweden. Yeni Safak, a pro-Erdogan newspaper, has treated Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson's recent statement hoping for "rapid ratification" following the Turkish elections as implicit Swedish support for a National Alliance victory. In the article, there was great emphasis on the main opposition's close relations with the pro-Kurdish People's Democratic Party, suggesting that the National Alliance would be less strict on demanding extradition of suspected Kurdish terrorists.

But irrespective of a National Alliance victory, Sweden may be compelled to further relax its foreign relations with Turkiye by demonstrating proactive enforcement of its reformed legislation on terrorism come June. Specifically, the legislation introduces a specific criminal provision for participation in, and financing of, a terrorist organisation. This builds on a constitutional amendment limiting freedom of association for groups engaged in terrorism, which entered into force on January 1, 2023. These legal changes will allow the Swedish government to take police action against suspected associates of officially recognized terrorist groups without judicial obstacles. This means that Sweden could more easily facilitate Turkiye's extradition requests as long as it finds the suspected individual has supported a recognized terrorist group such as the PKK. In the meantime, Sweden will continue to rely on regional defense and security cooperation through the Nordic Defense Cooperation (NORDEFCO), which Finland's NATO membership will only embolden.

Marko Cem Zerunyan is a second-year student at Columbia Law School and a Staff member of the Columbia Journal of Transnational Law as an Articles Editor for the 2023-2024 academic year. He is a dual-degree student who will simultaneously graduate from his LL.B in English Law from the King's College London, Dickson Poon School of Law in 2024.

Henry BloxenheimMay 10, 2023