Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan dropped his objection to Sweden and Finland joining NATO in exchange for compromise in his war against the Kurds.
Sweden’s support for Kurds’ rights has long been a point of conflict in relations with Turkey. Sweden has been a harsh critic of Turkish human rights abuses. That might change.
Since all 30 NATO countries must approve new members, Erdoğan had a lot of leverage. While Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has revived NATO, Erdoğan has turned the war in Ukraine to his own advantage.
Turkey has general elections scheduled next year and Erdoğan’s AK Party is sliding in the polls. His deal with NATO might win him support at home. All politics is local. Putin’s war is Erdoğan’s opportunity.
The Kurds have now paid the price for NATO’s expansion. The Kurds are Turkey’s largest ethnic minority – estimated to total 20 per cent of the population of Turkey. Kurdish movements have long demanded a separate Kurdish state and self-determination for the Kurds.
Millions of Kurds are scattered across the Middle East, notably Iraq, Turkey, Syria and Iran. In 1988, they were the victims of a nerve gas attack by the Saddam Hussein regime. Recently, the Kurds were at the forefront in the fight against the Islamic State (ISIS). They were assisted by the US.
The Kurds have been campaigning for their own state since the 1880s.
When the Ottoman Empire was defeated in the first world war, provisions were made for a Kurdish state in the treaty of Sèvres in 1920.
However, following the treaty of Lausanne, in 1923, the borders of modern Turkey were defined, shattering any hope of a Kurdish homeland.
The French and the British betrayed their hope for a Kurdish state dividing Kurdish-inhabited lands between Syria, Turkey and Iraq.
The 1980s saw the formation of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which waged a guerrilla war against the Turkish state. Thousands of innocent civilians, on both sides, have since been killed.
In 2019, president Donald Trump pulled back US troops essentially allowing the Turkish army to enter north-eastern Syria and attack Kurdish fighters, removing them from the area.
The Kurds have a long history of being used by the US and the West when such a policy suited them and betrayed when they are no longer of use. NATO’s compromise with Turkey’s Erdoğan in exchange for Turkey to drop its objection to Finland and Sweden joining NATO is the latest example.
Erdoğan has turned the war in Ukraine to his advantage
The agreement reached with Turkey paves the way for the extradition of political refugees to Turkey.
Sweden and Finland shall now extradite Kurds who sought refuge in these Nordic countries and who are suspected by Turkey of being terrorists.
Sweden has a large Kurdish diaspora, estimated to total more than 100,000 Kurds, many of them active within Sweden’s civil society and in political organisations.
While Stockholm has always considered the PKK as a terrorist organisation, yet, it always supported the Syrian People’s Protection Units (YPG) and its political arm, the Democratic Party Union (PYD).
Following the latest NATO summit, the YPG is now considered as a terrorist organisation too by Stockholm, which has caved in to Turkish demands in exchange for NATO membership. Many have labelled the Turkey-Sweden-Finland deals as a sell-out.
When faced by the Soviet threat, Finland and Sweden had considered neutrality to be in their best interests. More than three decades since the end of the Cold War, both Nordic countries, feeling threatened by Putin’s Russia following the invasion of Ukraine, swept aside their neutrality and sought NATO’s protection.
As a consequence of this decision, the Kurds are expected to pay a heavy price.
Another military attack, by Turkey, against the Kurds in Northern Syria cannot be excluded. Following NATO’s agreement with Turkey to drop its objections for Sweden’s and Finland’s NATO membership, such attack is likely to be met with a muted response by Stockholm, Helsinki, Washington and other NATO members.
It seems that the Kurds are always expendable.
The Kurds have an adage: “no friends but the mountains.” The adage proved itself again at the last NATO summit
Frank Psaila is a lawyer.