US in mad dash to get Sweden into NATO over opposition by Turkey, Hungary

The Biden administration is in a mad dash to get Turkey and Hungary to ratify Sweden’s accession to NATO when leaders meet next week in Lithuania. 

Turkey has held back on approving Sweden’s accession over criticisms that Stockholm harbors Kurdish groups that Ankara views as a threat. The public burning of a Quran, the Islamic holy book, by a protester outside a mosque in Stockholm last week has drawn further condemnation from Turkey.

In another complication, Hungary’s foreign minister said Tuesday that Budapest will not ratify Sweden’s accession until it gets the green light from Turkey.

Adding Sweden is viewed as a major boon to NATO, with Stockholm’s supporters pointing to its experienced military capabilities, its geographic location shoring up the northern front of Europe, and funds that will see it contribute 2 percent of its GDP to NATO’s budget.

“Sweden has fantastic armed forces, it has a particularly strong navy and air force and really, extraordinary capabilities that are an asset to NATO. So this is not just, ‘oh it’s nice to have another member,’” said Elisabeth Braw, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI).

“Sweden, we should remember, also has lots of expertise — not just in territorial defense but expeditionary warfare and in peacekeeping. It’s really a dream member state.”

Sweden also holds enormous symbolic importance, as a key signal of member-states’ stability and solidarity in supporting Ukraine against Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war, and as the Kremlin is grappling with the fallout of the Wagner mutiny attempt.  

“If we can’t get Turkey on board with the rest of the alliance, I worry that it’s a crack in the solidarity and an issue of credibility for the alliance,” Christopher Skaluba, director of the Transatlantic Security Initiative with the Atlantic Council, said during a panel event last week.

President Biden met with Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson at the White House Wednesday in a show of support for Stockholm joining the alliance by the deadline of the NATO summit on July 11 and 12 in Vilnius.

Biden called Sweden a “valued friend and partner” and said he is “anxiously looking forward to [their] membership” in NATO. 

Braw, of AEI, called it “extraordinary” that Biden is hosting Kristersson, and said it points to the political capital the president is putting forward to bring Sweden into NATO. 

Biden administration officials have engaged intensively with Turkey to negotiate the lifting of its objections. The White House has positioned the sale of F-16 fighter jets and upgrades to Turkey’s existing fleet as propositions contingent on Ankara moving forward with Sweden’s accession.

“This is a top priority of the United States, that Sweden become a NATO ally by Vilnius, and we are actively and persistently raising this with Turkey and with Hungary at all levels,” Douglas Jones, deputy assistant secretary in the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs at the State Department, told House lawmakers during a hearing last month.

He added that the U.S. has made clear to Turkey that ratifying Sweden’s accession to NATO “would help in many of these weapons transfers.”

The top four lawmakers on the foreign affairs committees in the House and Senate have opposed the administration moving forward on the F-16 sales, largely related to Turkey’s stonewalling Sweden’s accession to NATO.

While the president holds power to override congressional objections for weapons sales on national security concerns, the Biden administration has committed to lawmakers to go through the regular process of notification and congressional approval. 

Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has held the hardest line on opposing F-16 sales to Ankara. Menendez says Turkey holding up Sweden’s accession to NATO is only one bullet point in a long list of problematic behaviors — pointing to Turkey’s jailing of journalists and political opposition figures, its military incursions and intimidation into Greek and Cyprus territorial air and seas, and Ankara’s close ties with Moscow. 

“I’m not sure that [Turkish President Recep Tayyip] Erdoğan is willing to do what is necessary,” Menendez told The Hill in March.

“Does he want to be a true NATO ally or does he want to play all sides? And if you want to play all sides, then you can’t get the best of what we have.” 

Asked late last month if Menendez was open to negotiations on his hold on F-16’s for Turkey, the chairman pointed to Erdoğan needing to address his criticisms.  

“All he has to do is what I’ve said all along,” Menendez said.

But other lawmakers are more open to finding a workaround to allow F-16 sales to Turkey if Sweden’s accession to NATO is prioritized. 

“Chairman McCaul has been clear that with Turkey’s acceptance of Sweden’s accession into NATO, he would approve the F-16 case,” a Republican aide with the House Foreign Affairs Committee told The Hill regarding Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas).

“As part of NATO solidarity, it’s not helpful for us to be singling out one of the NATO members and trying to hold them out. I think that’s where he stands, NATO solidarity is critical. He sees Turkey as part of that and then also the addition of Sweden at this time is crucial just as we saw with Finland.” 

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg is working to break the impasse by hosting Turkey, Sweden and Finland for a meeting Thursday. 

The meeting is being held under the auspices of a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) that was signed by Turkey, Sweden and Finland in June 2022 when Ankara first raised objections to these countries joining the alliance, largely calling for Stockholm to crack down on Kurdish groups that Turkey labels as terrorist organizations.

Finland joined the alliance in April. 

U.S. officials and analysts acknowledge that Turkey has legitimate security concerns related to terrorist threats but say Sweden has fulfilled its duties under the MOA to address Ankara’s demands — to include broadening its anti-terrorism laws and allowing the extradition of at least one Turkish citizen that Ankara has accused of having links to a Kurdish terrorist group.

“Our belief is that … Sweden has taken Turkey’s counterterrorism concerns into account … They have implemented the MOA,” Jones, of the State Department, said in the hearing with House lawmakers. 

But Erdoğan is doubling down on criticisms against Sweden, pointing to the burning of a Quran by a protester last week as an act of terrorism being shielded by free speech. 

Swedish authorities reportedly granted a demonstration permit with the knowledge that the Quran would be torn up and burned, an act that a Swedish court had earlier ruled fell under the protections of free speech.

The protester who burned the book — on one of the holiest days in Islam, Eid al-Adha — was later charged by police with agitation against an ethnic or national group, Reuters reported. 

“The nefarious attack against our sacred book, the Holy Quran, in the Swedish capital city of Stockholm has infuriated all of us … That this hate crime has been committed under the protection of the police is even graver,” Erdoğan said Monday following a cabinet meeting.

“Everyone should acknowledge that [Turkey’s] friendship cannot be won by supporting terror, opening up space for terrorists, and allocating streets and the most central squares of cities to terrorists.” 

Turkey has long frustrated the U.S. as a problematic NATO ally, with Erdoğan holding enormous personal power over affairs of state. 

“I think everybody’s biting their nails, simply because it’s so unclear,” Braw said of whether Turkey will allow Sweden to join NATO.

“The way Erdoğan makes decisions is not the way everybody else makes decisions.”