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Sweden on its NATO Membership: Turkey is Asking Too Much

9Jan

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Europe

Sweden on its NATO Membership: Turkey is Asking Too Much

“Sweden is confident that Turkey will approve its application for NATO membership, but we cannot fulfill all Turkish demands,” Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said on Sunday, quoted by the Reuters agency. “Turkey has confirmed that we have done what we said we would do, but they also say that they want things that we cannot or do not want to give them,” the Swedish prime minister said on a conference on defense and security issues in the presence of NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg. In 2022, Sweden, Finland and Turkey signed a tripartite agreement aimed at removing Turkish objections to the two Scandinavian countries' bids for NATO membership, Reuters recalls. "We are convinced that Turkey will make a decision, we just don't know when," said the Swedish Prime Minister and ...

Why Sweden’s Social Democrats U-Turned on NATO

Sweden’s left has historically been opposed to joining NATO. But as the war in Ukraine made joining the alliance popular, Sweden’s Social Democrats changed tack, alienating many of their supporters and exposing deep divisions among the Left in the process. On November 8, Ulf Kristersson, the newly elected prime minister of Sweden, went to Turkey. He was courting President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan as a part of Sweden’s bid to join NATO. For many Swedes, the image that has come to symbolize the historic visit is a zoomed in frame of Kristersson’s hand, small and contorted, being squeezed to a bright red hue in Erdoğan’s grip. After Sweden officially asked to join the military alliance in May, many NATO nations quickly signaled their enthusiasm at the prospect of Swedish membership. But Turkey ...

NATO approves 2023 strategic direction for new innovation accelerator

On 12 December 2022, the Board of Directors of NATO’s Defence Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic (DIANA) agreed that energy resilience, secure information sharing and sensing and surveillance will be the priority areas of focus for DIANA’s work on Emerging and Disrupting Technologies (EDTs) in 2023. The three areas make up the backbone of DIANA’s Strategic Direction for 2023. The Strategic Direction will drive the identification of DIANA’s first defence and security challenges, for which dual-use technological solutions must be found. “This strategic direction gives the DIANA Executive clear guidance on the development of pilot programmes that we will launch in Spring 2023. These programmes will benefit both civilian and military communities” commented David Van Weel, DIANA’s i...