Turkey agreed Tuesday to lift its opposition to Sweden and Finland joining NATO, a breakthrough in an impasse clouding a leaders’ summit in Madrid amid Europe’s worst security crisis in decades triggered by the war in Ukraine.
Turkey wanted something, Turkey got something. Whether they got all they wanted, nobody knows.
Erdogan was pissed when an Islamic country couldn't get into the EU. So, he went in other directions. At the end of the day, he needs this:
ReplyDeleteTurkey made a request in October to the United States to buy 40 Lockheed Martin-made F-16 fighters and nearly 80 modernization kits for its existing warplanes. Washington has so far refrained from expressing any opinion on the sale, saying it needs to go through the standard arms sales process.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us-says-potential-f-16-sale-turkey-would-serve-us-interests-nato-letter-2022-04-06/
Never turned on the S-400 that he bought from Vladdy. Some pissy word salad and Sweden and Finland sell arms to another NATO country?
The "Whatever Turkey got" is likely more military support for them to pound the Kurdish population into dust, if Adam Silverman over at Balloon Juice is right. Link here to his take on the current Ukraine/NATO/Turkey situation: https://balloon-juice.com/war-for-ukraine-day-125-nato-is-set-to-expand-the-price-will-be-paid-by-the-kurds/
ReplyDeleteWhat does it say that in today's environment allowing Finland and Sweden into NATO is more important than the fate of a relatively small number of Kurds? I mean, yes, it sucks. But with Vladdy threatening to invade Finland (see his rants about how countries that are "historically part of Russia" should be part of Russia today), well. There's a lot more Fins than Turkish Kurds.
ReplyDelete