Square dancing is a time-honored American folk tradition involving four couples, energetic movements with rotating partners, intricate footwork, and a good deal of hidden coordination. When done well, the outward effect is spirited and graceful, if subtly frantic. For the unskilled, there can be awkward collisions and slips, ending in a tumble. There is often a degree of muddling through, with flying elbows and a missed turn or two. The dance represents a multilateral coordination challenge, unlike, say, the passionate pairing of the tango or an exquisite variation by a solo ballerina.
NATO has just gone through something like a twenty-month square dance. Shortly after Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Sweden and Finland applied to join NATO. Turkey and Hungary delayed the Finns for nearly a year (March 2023), and the Swedes even longer (with Turkey approving accession in late January 2024 and Hungary approving ın late February 2024). The twenty-month process was complicated, involving bargaining among multiple partners with common direction but conflicting agendas and styles: applicants (Sweden and Finland), ratifiers (Turkey and Hungary), facilitators (NATO leadership and the Biden administration), and would-be spoilers (Russia and the US Congress). With the process only recently concluded, some analysts erroneously attribute its drawn-out nature to one man—Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan—and his domestic political needs, personal business interests, and/or supposed Russophilia. Given an explicit Turkish criterion has been lax Swedish policies regarding the anti-Turkish Partiya Karkaren Kurdistan (Kurdish Workers’ Party, or PKK), does this make sense? The real, if complicated, story of divergent interests nested within a mutually beneficial proposition—and the diplomatic choreography that ultimately reconciled them—deserves a more nuanced telling.
Partners on the square
Two partners in this dance, Finland and Sweden, functioned as leads. Their decision to apply stemmed from the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Abandoning traditions of armed neutrality centuries or decades in the making—Sweden and Finland, respectively—both sought security guarantees after Putin’s menace toward neighbors had been made clear. Sweden brings strategically significant territory, military forces, and defense industry into the Alliance. Finns have recent memory of fighting the Russians, and provide a strong anchor to limit Russian ambitions in the far north.
Turkey and Hungary dragged their feet, and NATO bylaws require unanimity. This caused significant grumbling in Washington and other Western capitals, where the Turkish rationale for nonapproval—toleration of PKK activities in both countries—was seen as exaggerated, and Hungary’s objections as a mere echo of Erdoğan’s. Whatever other motives Ankara and Budapest had—demanding defense industrial cooperation, muting human-rights criticism, and/or influencing Washington—the differential speed of accession for Finland and Sweden suggests the PKK factor at play for the latter (but really not the former) was no pretext. Turkish policy analysts, including Erdoğan’s opposition, saw PKK recruitment, propaganda, and fundraising in Sweden as the crux of the matter, and believe delaying accession led to positive remedial steps by Sweden. Turkish parliamentarians considered Swedish implementation of the June 2022 Trilateral Memorandum alongside incentives from Brussels and Washington as central criteria for approval.
For NATO and the White House, bringing applicants and approvers into line was no simple hop, skip, and jump. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg conducted an intensive effort over the twenty months to reconcile Turkish concerns with those of the aspiring Nordic candidates. Stoltenberg praised Turkey after Finland’s admission, and pressed in positive terms for the addition of Sweden, coaxing and cajoling Erdoğan and Hungary’s Viktor Orbán at summits and in bilateral engagements. The Biden administration constructed a set of interlocking assurances that ended a de facto arms embargo on Turkey by the United States, Canada, and others; strengthened bilateral strategic dialogue; signaled intent to curtail a US partnership with a PKK-affiliated militia in Syria; and convinced Congress that F-16 sales to Turkey in exchange for Swedish accession was a sound deal.
Two parties on the periphery of the proverbial square made their presence felt too, each with incentive to trip the fancy footwork or stop the music altogether. One was Russia, which responded to the prospect of Finnish and Swedish NATO membership with threats of military escalation and the revival of dormant border disputes. Some commentators speculated that Erdoğan’s delays were less about supposedly exaggerated PKK concerns than about currying favor with Putin—with Orbán’s delay about pleasing both men. Moscow expressed its displeasure about NATO expansion early and often, undoubtedly doing what it could to exacerbate skepticism toward the Swedish bid, but failed in the end to stop accession. The US Congress nearly undid the Biden administration’s carefully constructed arrangement by hinting US arms sales to Turkey would not resume even if Ankara approved Sweden’s entry. Not only Senator Robert Menendez, well known as Ankara’s bête noire, but other key members of the House and Senate foreign affairs committees intimated that F-16s would only be approved after a broader set of behavioral modifications by the Turks. It took months of effort by the US ambassador to Turkey, Jeff Flake, and State Department officials to lobby Flake’s former congressional colleagues, and soften their resistance by linking Turkish F-16s to the sale of F-35 fighters to neighboring Greece. These efforts finally paid off in the January 2024 decisions by Turkish and American legislators to approve Sweden’s accession and Turkey’s aircraft, respectively.
Sweden and the PKK
Acknowledging the complexity of the Nordic accession story does not negate the role that Western policies toward the PKK played in Turkish calculus. Sweden has a complicated history regarding PKK presence and activities in the country. In the 1980s Sweden first banned, then tacitly accepted PKK presence. During the 1990s a significant number of Kurdish immigrants settled in Sweden, some with PKK sympathies, and took advantage of Sweden’s liberal criminal and terror laws to conduct recruitment, propaganda, and fundraising activities on behalf of the organization. PKK founder Abdullah Öcalan considered the role of Europe, and Sweden in particular, as a crucial rear support base—a role which did not change after the United States and the European Union designated the group as a terrorist organization.
Sweden’s tolerance—is it an affinity?—for the PKK movement deepened significantly with the rise of its Syrian affiliate, the People’s Protection Units (aka the YPG), as the Western-supported ground force battling the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) in Syria. Social Democrat-led center-left coalitions in Sweden from 2014 to 2022 espoused “the Kurdish cause,” Swedish political leaders met with and feted YPG leaders, and the government provided funding for the group’s de facto administration in northeast Syria. These actions created growing dissatisfaction in Ankara—and coincided with shifting Swedish views about NATO membership based on the war in Ukraine. The tension between treating the PKK and its affiliates as Kurdish civil society groups and asking Turkey to approve Sweden’s NATO application was taken seriously by the conservative government that assumed office in 2022. Building on proposals initially considered by the previous Social Democrat government, legal reforms were enacted to criminalize terror support activities on Swedish soil, whereas previously, membership and support were not indictable so long as no violent terror acts were carried out within Sweden. Those reforms took full effect in mid-2023, but Swedish officials have recognized that the problem runs deep and substantive progress will take time. There has been growing concern in Sweden about criminal, gang, and terror activities in Swedish cities, of which PKK activities form but a part. It is hardly surprising that PKK protests targeted the legal reforms, while agitating against Sweden’s NATO bid itself.
Sweden changes tune
In addition to the aforementioned constitutional reforms, diplomatic sources indicated that Sweden posted permanent security liaison staff in Ankara and provided Turkish officials regular access to security ministries in Stockholm, long-standing requests from the Turks. The new laws, if vigorously implemented, might resolve most of Ankara’s concerns, though provocations blurring the line between incitement and free speech have convinced Swedish authorities that even more tightening is needed.
There has not been much in the way of actual arrests or deportations. PKK financier Yahya Gungor was convicted and ordered deported, but his expulsion was overturned on appeal. PKK sympathizer Mehmet Kokulu was extradited for drug offenses, largely because the Swedish court found little evidence of political activities. PKK activist Mahmut Tat was extradited in December 2022 for PKK membership, shortly after Swedish Foreign Minister Tobias Billström acknowledged the need to put distance between his country and the terror organization. Billström later described PKK activities in Sweden as “quite wide-ranging.” Swedish accession negotiator Oscar Stenström conceded in early 2023 that “a non-negligible part of the funding of the organization emanates from Sweden.” As European Police (EUROPOL) reports have noted, PKK continues to raise money in Sweden via kampanya, a fundraising campaign that targets the Kurdish diaspora community, is referred to as a tax, and is alleged to involve harassment and extortion. Europol separately points to group members allegedly involved in “organised crime activities such as money laundering, racketeering, extortion and drug trafficking.”
Lack of trust in Sweden’s ability to deliver helps explain why Ankara required inducements from Washington and Brussels. Ömer Özkizilcik, an Ankara-based analyst, assessed that as a stand-alone proposition, Sweden’s counter-PKK enforcement was insufficient:
Sweden has taken steps, but they are not enough. We still see PKK supporters marching in Sweden with PKK flags. Sweden—unlike Germany, for example—has not banned PKK symbols. More importantly, the PKK network is still active and the Swedish law enforcement has to take strong action and dismantle it. The PKK network operates in a quadrangle between France, Belgium, Germany, and Sweden. In this quadrangle, Sweden is the most progressive democracy. Turkey hopes that Sweden will become a positive example for other European nations. Turkey may bomb and eliminate the PKK in Iraq and Syria, but in Europe, the fight against the PKK is diplomatic.
Therein lies a central logic of ultimate Turkish approval: demonstrating to other European countries that enforcing counterterror laws against the PKK is compatible with democratic governance.
Soner Cagaptay of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy has argued that the PKK itself took steps to delay or derail accession:
Turkey was about to finalize and ratify in October, and the day the Parliament came back into session the PKK carried out a terror attack in Ankara, making it politically impossible to ratify. The PKK wanted to delay ratification, which would result in F-16s for Türkiye and a reset in the US-Turkish relations. The PKK dimension is easy for analysts working at a distance to dismiss as Erdoğan grandstanding. But one thing about Erdoğan is that he’s very good at making what is good for Türkiye good for him. He doesn’t make these conflicts or concerns up—but he is very good at using them to boost his image.
Squaring up anew
It can be tempting to oversimplify the accession affair or dismiss it as unnecessary, unseemly, or capricious—but to do so is to misread context, dynamics, and implications. Such a misread might also incline an observer to miss the significant potential openings the process has created for the Alliance, above and beyond the addition of two new members. Those members certainly are welcome in terms of the geographical and military dimensions of the Alliance. Successful negotiation of Swedish accession required patience and creativity, given the low-trust environment prevailing in recent years between two of the main actors, the United States and Turkey. This might create a virtuous cycle, where other positive developments take root as a more conducive tone emerges. One possibility is broader defense industrial cooperation on new projects, as the first major US-Turkish arms deal in a generation gets off the ground. Another might be a more sustainable, and less hypocritical, approach by European countries toward criminal and terror-related activities in their urban centers, with Sweden as a test case. As NATO does a more complete job of accounting for the security concerns of a cornerstone member (Turkey) beyond the singular threat of Russia, intra-Alliance frictions should attenuate significantly. As with most dances, a degree of theater was involved—but where the couples go after the music stops may be more interesting than the show.
Rich Outzen is a geopolitical consultant and nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council in Turkey with thirty-two years of government service both in uniform and as a civilian. Follow him on Twitter @RichOutzen.
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The Atlantic Council in Turkey, which is in charge of the Turkey program, aims to promote and strengthen transatlantic engagement with the region by providing a high-level forum and pursuing programming to address the most important issues on energy, economics, security, and defense.
Image: Sweden's Foreign Minister Tobias Billstrom, Greece's Foreign Minister Giorgos Gerapetritis, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, and Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan attend a NATO foreign ministers meeting at the Alliance's headquarters in Brussels, Belgium November 28, 2023. REUTERS/Yves Herman