Turkiye’s Erdogan Urges NATO membership for Ukraine, but Stiff-Arms Sweden over Kurdish Issue

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan invited Ukraine’s leader, Volodomir Zelensky, to Istanbul for consultations. Zelensky arrived late on Friday and met for two and a half hours with Erdogan at the Vahidettin Palace, the old residence of the last Ottoman emperor.

In remarks after the meeting, Erdogan deplored the continuing war and called for peace talks between the two sides, He opined, “There are no losers in a just peace.” He also urged a renewal of the Grain Corridor agreement that Turkiye negotiated between the two warring countries, which keeps grain exports flowing despite the war, helping millions of people who depend on Ukrainian and Russian wheat. The grain corridor treaty has been renewed every two months, but Erdogan urged that the term of each agreement be extended to three months and eventually to two years.

Thus far, his remarks were in line with Turkiye’s attempt, despite being a member of NATO, to retain a degree of neutrality toward the two sides. For instance, Turkiye has rejected the urging of the United States that it boycott Russia economically.

Turkiye has in fact grown economically closer to Russia, and its energy imports from Moscow have raised the ire of Washington officials who have threatened sanctions against Turkish concerns if they go on this way. Turkish firms have opportunistically rushed in to the Russian market as European and American ones have exited.

Erdogan, however, made it clear that he sided more with Zelensky than with Putin. He noted that Turkiye from the beginning of the conflict has offered help to Ukraine, a reference to the Bayraktar drones he supplies to Kyiv, which have proved effective against Russian forces.

Then he dropped a bombshell. He said, “Without doubt, Ukraine has the right to membership in NATO [Şüphesiz Ukrayna, NATO’ya üyeliği hak ediyor.].”

You could have knocked me over with a feather. This statement will make the Zelensky government very happy. But it certainly angered Russian President Vladimir Putin, who invaded Ukraine to forestall exactly this scenario. Erdogan announced that Putin would visit Turkiye in August, then slapped him in the face.

It is also weird that while Ukraine is pressing for NATO membership, few other NATO members think it is a good idea.

That includes the United States, where President Joe Biden dismissed the idea in an interview on Friday, saying “I don’t think there is unanimity in Nato about whether or not to bring Ukraine into the Nato family now, at this moment, in the middle of a war.” He explained that because of Article 5 of the NATO charter, which says that an attack on one is an attack on all, the entirety of NATO would be at war with Russia if Ukraine were a member.

On the other hand, Biden and the rest of the members have been pressing Erdogan to admit Sweden to NATO, as he did Finland, but the Turkish president has so far refused. He sees Sweden’s broad asylum laws as having made it a refuge for Kurdish activists whom he considers terrorists and whom he wants extradited for trial in Turkiye. Erdogan has also been angered that Swedish courts have permitted the burning of the Qur’an on grounds of freedom of speech.

It may be that bringing up Ukraine joining NATO is a way to fend off NATO criticism of Erdogan’s stiff-arming of Sweden.

I suppose Erdogan could tell Putin that NATO will not admit Ukraine as long as the war continues, so it is irrelevant what Turkiye says on this issue. It is possible that Russia now desperately needs Turkish trade and investment, since Ankara is one of the few governments refusing to boycott it, and so will just have to put up with Erdogan’s wilder statements. We’ll see if Putin comes to Turkiye in August, how much of a deep freeze the crack about Ukraine joining NATO will cause between Moscow and Ankara.