Turkey’s Islamist leader, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has suggested he will not approve Sweden joining NATO until the European Union (EU) advances Turkey from official candidate country to full member-state.
“I am calling from here on these countries that are making Turkey wait at the door of the European Union for more than 50 years,” he said ahead of his departure for the NATO summit in Lithuania. “First, come and open the way for Turkey at the European Union and then we will open the way for Sweden,” he added.
Erdoğan previously used the migrant crisis of 2015-16 to extort billions of euros from the EU in exchange for limiting the flow of people across its territory into Greece. He engineered another violent border crisis in 2020, but it was cut short by the onset of the coronavirus pandemic.
Turkey has raised several issues with Sweden’s application to join NATO, not least its reluctance to prevent protests near the Turkish embassy in which copies of the Quran have been burned – protests which caused Sweden’s Muslim population to riot. Erdoğan has also been pressuring Sweden, with some success, to extradite Kurds accused of resisting his government or mocking him online to face punishment.
Viktor Orbán-led Hungary has also been reluctant to support Sweden’s accession to NATO, in part because the Scandinavian country often lobbies for Hungary to be punished by the EU for its pro-borders, anti-transgenderism policies.
