Turkey’s government accuses Sweden of being too lenient toward groups that Ankara says pose a security threat, including militant Kurdish groups and people associated with a 2016 coup attempt.
A series of separate demonstrations in Stockholm, including a protest by an anti-Islam activist who burned the Quran outside the Turkish Embassy, also angered Turkish officials.
NATO requires the unanimous approval of all existing members to expand, and Turkey and Hungary are the only countries that have not yet ratified Sweden’s request to join.
A summary of the Sweden/NATO/Turkey situation. Sweden wants to join NATO. US wants Sweden to join NATO. Turkey and Sweden have had some frosty relations due to Sweden criticising Turkey in various matters.
Turkey was using the situation to pressure US to sell them F16. Then some right wing activists in Sweden (with some ties to Russia) used the opportunity to upset Erdogan by burning the Quran outside of their Embassy. Which then gave Turkey the opportunity to act very offended, and could put even more pressure on US to get the F16. NATO was then hoping for Erdogan to lose the election, which he unfortunately didn’t do (at least officially). So, now my guess is that they are back to talking about getting the F16, hence Erdogan is doing public statements about Sweden not joining any time soon.
It amuses me how Turkey is having to pull public stunts like this just to be considered for F16s, whereas before they were one of F35 recipients, but they threw that away and instead bought Russian-produced air defenses.
This might be unpopular, but I don’t think it matters. I imagine Sweden is very cooperative with NATO anyways, like Finland was integrated even before its accession. Finland is much more important, it lets NATO patrol Russian borders with more legitimacy.
Also, it’s not like NATO’s function is anything more than a protection against Russia, and maybe to a very much lesser degree countries like Serbia. I don’t expect NATO to be unified against China for example, as long as China stays peaceful.
And it’s not like Russia will make any more invasions any time soon.
True, Russia is currently the 2nd strongest army in Ukraine, if not the 2nd strongest army in Russia. They lack the manpower and resources to extend their aggression deeper into Eastern Europe, so I don’t think NATO will need to mobilize to prevent an incursion into a country like Estonia or Latvia. But in that unlikely scenario we’d have Sweden’s backing, NATO member or not.
Can member countries be “kicked out” of NATO?
I don’t think there is a specific process for that outlined in NATO’s treaty. However, Article 60 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties suggests a member country could commit a material breach of the treaty, if that nation that violated the principles of the treaty in a systematic and egregious manner. The decision to suspend or expel that nation would have to be a unanimous decision made by all other existing members.
There have been calls to suspend Turkey from NATO in the past, but there’s no precedent for suspending a NATO member, and that’s probably part of the reason why the member countries have been hesitant to do so. The U.S. in particular might not back the idea, since this would be very damaging to our diplomatic relations with Turkey in general. However, Hungary has been so pro-Russia lately that there may be a strong case for suspending them from NATO, and I don’t believe they’re seen as important as Turkey from a diplomatic standpoint, either. So, that’s a possibility if they continue to block Sweden from joining.
Unfortunately Turkey controls the Bosporus Strait which connects the Black Sea with the Mediterranean Sea (and the rest of the world). This makes the quite an important player since a large part of the Russian Navy is located in the Black Sea. Turkey is well aware of this of course, and know exactly how they can use this as a leverage against NATO.
Not really also it would cost two. Hungary and Turkey. And “Turkeys geographically location is to important” (god i want to put a uranium firework up lil wannabe putins ass)
