Turkey halted Sweden’s and Finland’s NATO membership on Tuesday, postponing sine die a tripartite meeting initially scheduled for early February and intended to remove Ankara’s objections to their candidacy.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had warned on Monday that Sweden, already accused by Turkey of harboring Kurdish “terrorists”, could no longer count on the “support” of Ankara, after a far-right activist burned a copy of the Koran in Stockholm.
A diplomatic source in Ankara, however, made it clear that it was only a “postponement to a later date” of the meeting.
Faced with Mr. Erdogan’s warning, Finland for the first time opened the door on Tuesday to NATO membership without Sweden.
A joint membership of the two Nordic countries remains “the first option”, but “we obviously have to assess the situation, if something has happened which means that in the long term Sweden can no longer move forward”, affirmed the head of Finnish diplomacy Pekka Haavisto on public television Yle.
The burning of a Koran by an anti-Islamic right-wing extremist on Saturday near the Turkish embassy in Sweden sparked strong protests from Ankara — and several capitals of the Muslim world — which had already canceled a visit on Saturday announced by the Swedish Minister of Defence.
Stockholm deplored a “deeply disrespectful” act and expressed its “sympathy” to Muslims, stressing that the Swedish Constitution prevented the prohibition of this type of action, without however extinguishing Turkish anger.
These protests are an “obstructing” of NATO candidacies and the “protesters are playing with the security of Finland and Sweden”, Mr. Haavisto lamented on Tuesday.
“My own conclusion is that there will be a delay (for a Turkish green light), which will certainly last until the Turkish elections in mid-May,” he acknowledged.
A pro-Kurdish demonstration, with many flags of the Ankara-hunted Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), also took place in central Stockholm on Saturday.
In mid-January, a support group for Kurdish armed groups in Syria, the Rojava Committee, hung a mannequin bearing the image of Recep Tayyip Erdogan in front of Stockholm City Hall, arousing indignation in Ankara despite condemnations of the Swedish government.
” Plan B “
Unlike the case of Sweden, Turkey has said in recent months that it has no major objections to Finland’s entry into NATO.
Like the 30 members of the alliance, Ankara must ratify the entry of any new member and therefore has a right of veto.
Only Turkey and Hungary – which claims not to want to block them – have yet to ratify these two memberships.
Helsinki had so far refused to speculate on an entry without Sweden, pointing to the advantages of joint membership with its very close neighbour.
“There is a change: now plans B are expressed out loud,” said Matti Pesu, defense expert at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs (FIIA).
“I think the heads of government have considered several scenarios, but so far it was considered important to maintain a united line and it was not necessarily wise to say that Finland was considering going without Sweden. , he analyzes.
Swedish Foreign Minister Tobias Billström told Swedish media on Tuesday that he was “in contact with Finland to find out what this really means”.
In May, the two Nordic countries submitted their candidacy on the same day to NATO headquarters in Brussels, as a direct result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, ending decades out of military alliances.
Finland, forced by Moscow to a forced neutrality during the Cold War, shares a border of more than 1300 kilometers with Russia, which would extend the line of contact between NATO and Moscow by the same amount.
A memorandum of understanding with Turkey was signed in June in Madrid, but Ankara considers Swedish efforts to respect it insufficient.