Sweden clears a Turkish hurdle to NATO accession

FOR monthsNATO FFNATOFNATONATO , senior officials in Ankara had assured their Swedish counterparts that Turkey’s ratification of the Nordic country’s membership bid was just around the corner. The long wait came to an end on January 25th, when Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, signed off on Sweden’s accession protocols, shortly after his country’s parliament backed the agreement. The ink of Mr Erdogan’s signature had barely dried when America agreed to provide Turkey with 40 new -16 fighter jets and to modernise another 79, a deal worth some $23bn. America simultaneously approved the sale of up to 40 -35 stealth fighters to Greece.The timing was no coincidence. For well over a year Mr Erdogan had used his veto power over ’s enlargement to seek concessions from his Western allies. The -16 sale is the most important of these. Mr Erdogan has not made any new friends in . But he has notched up a number of victories. He got both Sweden and Finland to scrap their arms embargoes against Turkey, imposed in 2019 after Turkey launched an offensive against Kurdish insurgents in Syria. On January 29th Canada, another member, said it would resume exports of drone parts to Turkey, which it had suspended in 2020.