Born, because the agreement between Turkey, Sweden and Finland is fragile
Despite the agreement for the entry of Sweden and Finland into NATO, Erdogan's Turkey has already begun to protest. Here because. Marco Orioles's article
The diatribe between Turkey on the one hand and Sweden and Finland on the other ends with a three-party agreement, paving the way, subject to parliamentary ratification by the current thirty NATO member states, for Stockholm and Helsinki to join the Atlantic Alliance.
But a few hours after the signing of the trilateral Memorandum , Turkish President Erdogan is already raising his voice demanding full compliance with an agreement that binds the two Baltic countries to close cooperation with Ankara on counter-terrorism.
The signing of the trilateral Memorandum
The Memorandum was signed by the three foreign ministers, the Turkish Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, the Swedish Ann Linde and the Finnish Pekka Haavisto at the NATO summit in Madrid under the auspices of the Secretary General of the Alliance Jens Stoltenberg and the blessing of Joe Biden, already ready to reward Turkey with the sale of forty F-16s and eighty modernization kits for the same aircraft already used by the Turkish Air Force.
The terms of the agreement
As for the contents of the agreement, Stoltenberg stated, as reported by the Guardian , that Sweden and Finland have agreed to "further amend their domestic legislation" and that they will work to "crack down on the activities of the PKK" in the context of an extradition agreement. with Turkey.
The two Nordic countries reiterated that the PKK is a banned organization and agreed, in a key concession, not to provide support to its Kurdish subsidiaries PYD and YPG. Sweden and Finland also said that the preconditions for their arms embargo on Turkey have failed.
The satisfaction of the leaders
Great satisfaction, at least for the moment, was expressed by the Turkish side. "Turkey got what it wanted" reads the statement issued by Erdogan's Bureau and reported by the Guardian , with the specification that "Turkey has made significant progress in the fight against terrorist organizations".
Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson hailed the agreement as "a very good deal", rejecting the argument that the country had exceeded concessions to thwart the threat of a Turkish veto to join NATO. “And of course – added the premier. we will continue our fight against terrorism and, as members of NATO, we will do so in close cooperation with Turkey ”.
For his part, Finnish President Sauli Ninisto said: "our joint Memorandum underlines the commitment of Finland, Sweden and Turkey to extend their full support against threats to mutual security". "The fact that we will become NATO allies", he added, "will only strengthen this commitment".
The reserves 48 hours away
Not even 48 hours had passed since the signing of the trilateral Memorandum, however, that the tones between the three countries were once again heated.
Erdogan felt compelled to warn Sweden and Finland that, if they did not fully comply with their commitments, the Turkish parliament would not ratify their entry into NATO.
The Turkish President specified that Sweden had promised to extradite 73 "terrorists" and that it would take steps to stop the PKK's financing and recruiting activities. But in reality the text of the memorandum does not say anything in this sense apart from general recommendations to consider the extradition requests made by Turkey.
Finnish President Ninisto confirmed that there is no list of actual or potential terrorists in the Memorandum. He also significantly added that “In the event of extraditions we will follow our laws and international agreements. Ultimately, extradition is a legal matter in which politicians have no right to interfere ”.
The same concept was reiterated by Andersson in a statement released Wednesday to the public broadcaster SVT: “I know some are worried that we will go after people to extradite them, and I think it is important to say that we will always follow Swedish laws and international conventions and we will never extradite Swedish citizens ”.
A fragile deal?
From the words of the protagonists it is clear all the fragility of the three-party agreement, which potentially leaves the accession of Sweden and Finland to NATO hostage to the Turkish veto.
The two Baltic countries have a reputation for being a safe asylum for members of the Turkish diaspora and have found refuge there several suspects of the attempted coup in Ankara, orchestrated in 2016 according to Turkish accusations by organizations led by preacher Fethullah Gülen.
For all three countries it is a question of principle: on the one hand, for Ankara, the priority in the fight against Kurdish separatism, on the other hand the sacrosanct right of asylum generously granted by Sweden and Finland to all persecuted on earth.
Finding a synthesis will not be easy and it will take the full weight of Biden's America and its cutting-edge weaponry to convince Erdogan to sheathe his sword.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/erdogan-svezia-finlandia-terrorismo/ on Fri, 01 Jul 2022 08:30:03 +0000.