Türkiye’s nod to Sweden’s participation to grand NATO drill

Türkiye has approved  Sweden’s participation in NATO’s Steadfast Defender 2024 military exercise, which is due to start this week, even though the nordic country is not yet a member.

Steadfast Defender 2024, which starts this week and will last for three months, will be NATO’s largest military exercise since the end of the Cold War. The scope of the exercise, which assumes the threat posed by Russia to Eastern Europe and the Baltic region after its war against Ukraine, was finalized at a NATO Military Committee meeting in Brussels on January 17-18, where Türkiye was represented by General Metin Gürak, Chief of the Turkish General Staff.

Therefore, Türkiye approved Sweden’s participation in this important NATO exercise as a member state as all decisions in NATO can be taken unanimously.

“This exercise,” says Fatih Ceylan, a retired ambassador and former permanent representative of Türkiye to NATO, “is a test of NATO’s Article 5, which states that if one of the allies is attacked, all the others will support it. Therefore, Sweden’s approval to participate in this exercise means that Sweden is if not de jure, a de facto NATO member.”

Sweden’s membership: now it’s up to Parliament

It is impossible to say that this approval by the General Staff was given without the approval of the Minister of National Defense Yaşar Güler and President Tayyip Erdoğan. Indeed, the day before General Gürak’s participation in the meeting in Brussels, Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, speaking at a session of the Turkish Grand National Assembly on the PKK attack in Iraq on January 12, in which 9 soldiers were killed, spoke of “Sweden’s positive attitude”.

These developments suggest that Sweden’s NATO membership will be submitted to the Parliament’s General Assembly for approval soon, perhaps this week, simultaneously or in parallel with the NATO exercises.

On December 18, Erdoğan announced that US President Joe Biden had linked the sale of F-16s to Türkiye with Sweden’s NATO membership after receiving a phone call from him on December 14.  The ratification document Erdoğan signed in October was approved by the Turkish Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee on December 26.

Will Biden keep his word?

Sweden and Finland applied for NATO membership after Russia’s war against Ukraine in 2022.

Türkiye, on the other hand, emphasizing that NATO is a common security organization, had demanded effective steps from both northern countries against organizations that pose a threat to Türkiye’s security, especially the PKK. Finland soon complied with Ankara’s demands and became the 31st NATO member, but the problem with Sweden took longer.

The approval of Sweden’s NATO membership by the Turkish Grand National Assembly is not a reversible step if the US President does not or cannot keep his promise to Erdoğan, i.e. if the F-16 sale does not materialize; Sweden will become NATO’s 32nd member. But developments show that Erdogan has been forced to take this political risk.

Unless the opposite happens, Erdogan will meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Kazakhstan on January 24-25, just as the NATO exercises are about to start, at the Astana Group meetings on Syria (with the participation of Iranian President Ibrahim Reisi).

Against the “Russian threat”

Russia has declared that the NATO military exercise in which Sweden will participate is a “provocation” against it.

A total of 90,000 troops from all NATO members, including Türkiye, and Sweden as a guest participant, will take part in the Steadfast Defender-2024 exercise. The Commander of NATO Allied Command Europe (SACEUR), US General Christopher Cavoli, announced that the exercise will demonstrate the Alliance’s unity and solidarity in the face of an enemy attack, as well as rehearse the ability to rapidly shift forces from North America and other parts of the Alliance in the event of an attack.

Cavoli did not say Russia was the enemy, but Dutch Admiral Robert Bauer, Chairman of NATO’s Military Committee, did. Bauer said that NATO’s European members and citizens must be ready for a war with Russia in the next 20 years.

The biggest since the Cold War

On the other hand, diplomatic sources point out that the planning of this exercise has been going on for more than a year, that the final decision was made after at least three high-level planning meetings in which Türkiye participated, that Sweden’s participation had been discussed a year ago, and that the whole process was carried out with Ankara’s knowledge and approval.

The last NATO exercise of this magnitude was held in 1988 with the participation of 125,000 soldiers. A year after this exercise, the Berlin Wall fell and the collapse of the Soviet Union in early 1992 was considered the end of the Cold War.

NATO sources announced that in addition to 90,000 troops, more than 50 warships, including aircraft carriers and destroyers, more than 80 fighter jets, 133 tanks and 533 armored personnel carriers, and a total of 1,100 combat vehicles will participate in the exercise.

The Ministry of National Defense has not yet announced how many vehicles and troops Türkiye will participate in the exercise and in what role.