With the invasion of Ukraine, Vladimir Putin has managed, against his will, to break one of the European taboos. Finland and Sweden have abandoned almost seventy years of neutrality and asked to join NATO, the military organization of the Western world.
However, it will not be an easy task because that income has to be decided unanimously by all its 30 members. Turkey, which has the second largest army in the Atlantic alliance, has made it clear that it does not agree. In the coming weeks there will be intense negotiations.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a strong supporter of Ukraine, said it was not worth Sweden and Finland sending delegations to Ankara to try to talk him out of it. US President Joe Biden will receive on Thursday his Finnish counterpart, Sauli Niinistö, and Sweden’s Prime Minister, Magdalena Andersson.
“We will not say ‘yes’ to those [países] that apply sanctions to Turkey to join the NATO security organization,” Erdogan said at a press conference on Monday night. He was referring to Sweden’s suspension of arms sales to Turkey in 2019 for its military activities in Syria. But also to the protection that Stockholm grants to the militants of the PKK, the Kurdish separatist party that Ankara considers a terrorist organization.
The Turkish position has caused some alarm in the West due to the commitment that NATO and the European Union have put into defending Ukraine.
“The stakes now are huge,” said Timothy Ash, emerging markets strategist at the British think tank. Bluebay Asset Management. “It seems that a big crisis is coming in the relations between Turkey and the West due to the candidacy of Finland and Sweden to NATO.”
“Other NATO members will be furious with Turkey, given the now clear and present danger to Europe presented by Putin in Ukraine,” Ash added. “Turkey will be seen as an unreliable partner. This will leave even more bad blood/faith between the two parties: the remnants of a Turkish bid for EU membership will disappear’, which has been under discussion for some twenty-five years.
On the other hand, Moscow is clearly opposed. He sees the expansion of NATO towards its borders as a danger and this could naturally affect relations with the two northern European countries. In fact, in the years 1933 and 1939, before the Second World War, Russia – then the Soviet Union – had a border war with Finland, which they won and seized about 100 square kilometers from Helsinki.
In statements collected by the television channel Russia Todaycompletely aligned with Putin, he stated that he was opposed to NATO enlargement, but that it was not such a serious problem either.
“As for the expansion of the alliance to Finland and Sweden, Russia has no problems with these states. And, therefore, in this sense, an expansion to these countries does not create direct threats for us,” Putin assured during a summit with the leaders of the member countries of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), which brings together some of the former Soviet republics, considered very close to Moscow.
But “an expansion of the military infrastructure in those territories would certainly provoke a response from us. And we will see what it would be based on the threats that are created for us, “added the president.
In his opinion, NATO «transcends its Euro-Atlantic geographic purpose, and is trying to become more and more actively involved in international affairs, control international security situations, and influence them, and not in the best way, in other regions of the world. world. This certainly requires additional attention on our part,” Putin reaffirmed.
