Objections from Turkey have stalled membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization for Finland and Sweden. On Sunday, Sectary-General Jen Stoltenberg said Ankara’s concerns about terrorism were legitimate.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan says Finland and Sweden support members of the Kurdish Worker’s Party (PKK). Ankara claims the PKK is a terror group and has fought a multi-decade insurgency against the country’s Kurdish minority.
During a meeting with Finland’s president, Stoltenberg weighed in on Turkey’s concerns. “These are legitimate concerns. This is about terrorism and about weapons exports. And we have to understand and remember that no other NATO ally has suffered more terrorist attacks than Turkey,” he said.
Secretary-General Stoltenberg laid out why Ankara was an essential member of the alliance. He pointed out, Turkey’s "strategic geographic location" on the Black Sea. He added, "We also need to take into account that no other NATO ally hosts more refugees than Turkey.”
Helsinki and Stockholm submitted applications to join NATO last month. Stoltenberg and Secretary of State Antony Blinken have repeatedly expressed that Sweden and Finland would become alliance members in short order. However, to join NATO, a country must receive support from all member states, and Ankara has placed a roadblock in the membership process.
Recent developments in Stockholm have made it less likely that Ankara’s concerns will be resolved. To survive the vote, Sweden’s ruling Social Democrats needed the support of Amineh Kakabaveh, an independent MP of Kurdish-Iranian heritage. Kakabaveh’s vote gave the Social Democrats a majority. After the vote said the Swedish government gave her assurances that they wouldn’t cave to Turkey’s demands regarding Kurdish militant groups.
Kyle Anzalone is the opinion editor of Antiwar.com, news editor of the Libertarian Institute, and co-host of Conflicts of Interest.
The PKK is pro-Russian, there is the rub.
None of them will “cave” to turkish demands, since they’re overwhelmed by Kurds, which means turkey just saved them from their own stupidity.
Sweden particularly is governed by the globalist social democratic regime, who’s main voting base is imported Muslim migrants from the Middle East, north Africa and a lot of Kurds such as Kakabave. Barely speaking comprehensible swedish, she’s still allowed to paralyse the government if she doesn’t get her way on especially kurdish issues and the regime’s relation to turkey. A clown world.
Will she be able to prevent informal (“honorary”) membership, like Georgia and the Ukraine? And mainly it’s just hard to imagine the Neocon Nazis would indulge so insignificant an obstacle, … i.e., given they’re already in blood up to their beady eyeballs.
Sweden’s population is 94% “white,” and its largest immigrant population is Finnish.
Ethnic swedes remain some 8.6 million give or take, same as up to the late 80’s early 90’s when mass import of “refugees” started. There are some 2.5 million Arabs (and counting to the tune of over 20.000/ year) and hundreds of thousands of Somalis. These are facts. There is also a hugh gray area since the social democratic regime refuse census. In the 70’s your figure would have been about right, but most Finns went back to Finland during the 90’s.
As of 2021, the correct figure is about 450,000 Arabs, not 2.5 million; and about 70,000 Somalis, not hundreds of thousands.
What was Turkey’s role in funding ISIS, especially driving the devastation in Syria and Iraq over the past decade?