The annual NATO conference is turning out to be a basket of surprises thus far this year, not all of them pleasant. Obviously, the war in Ukraine will be a top issue of discussion, but they will also need to deal with issues of potentially expanding their membership further. That’s where Turkish President (or tyrant) Recep Tayyip Erdogan comes into the picture. Sweden has applied for NATO membership, but unlike Finland, Sweden’s application has been stuck in limbo. The sole reason for that has been Erdogan’s insistence that they are not a reliable enough ally because they “aren’t tough enough” on the Kurds. But today Erodan was changing his tune. He said today that Turkey might approve Sweden’s application, but only if European nations “open the way” for Turkey to join the EU. In other words, it was yet another blackmail scheme… until people noticed. (Yahoo News)

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Monday introduced a new condition for approving Sweden’s membership in NATO, calling on European countries to “open the way” for Turkey to join the European Union.

The surprise announcement by Erdogan before departing to a NATO summit in Lithuania’s capital added new uncertainty to Sweden’s bid to become the alliance’s 32nd member, which Turkey initially blocked saying Sweden was too soft on Kurdish militants and other groups that Ankara considers security threats.

It was the first time that Erdogan linked his country’s ambition to join the EU with Sweden’s efforts to become a NATO member.

Speaking to reporters today, Erdogan didn’t even try to hide what he was doing. He complained that Turkey had been kept “waiting at the door” of the EU for fifty years while almost all European NATO members were already members of the EU. And if Europe “opens the way” for Turkey into the EU, Turkey will “pave the way for Sweden as we did for Finland.”

In other words, he didn’t really have a major beef with Sweden. He just wanted something for himself in return first. Of course, membership in the EU carries a lot of advantages for a nation, particularly economically. Erdogan isn’t blind to that. But he ignores the fact that the other countries in the EU he mentions are actually European countries. Turkey is almost entirely in Asia except for a tiny section on the Balkan Peninsula.

And then there’s the fact that Turkey hasn’t exactly been a reliable ally to either NATO or the EU under Erdogan’s rule. He’s at least as closely aligned with Russia and Iran as he is with Europe or the United States. He has endangered military security through the weapons deals he’s cut with the Russians. And he’s held multiple Western citizens hostage, sometimes for years, including Americans. What sort of an ally does that?

The reason that all of this context is (possibly) in the past tense is that Erdogan later retracted. According to the WaPo, Erdogan has now agreed to let Sweden’s bid move forward. He’s probably just trying to bandage up the wounds of his obvious duplicity, but sometimes you take what you can get.

That shouldn’t be enough, though. Fool me once, shame on you, etc. There’s probably a better solution on the table than what Erdogan was proposing, though nobody apparently wants to bring it up during all of the Ukrainian tension that’s gripping the world. Instead of allowing Turkey into the EU and accepting Sweden into NATO as a trade, once Sweden is in, let’s boot Turkey out of NATO and have the rest of the members vote in Sweden without them.

Problem solved! Let Erdogan go partner up with Putin, which he’s pretty much already done anyway. But as I said, I highly doubt anyone is in the mood to be that practical and blunt at the moment. But our various NATO representatives should ask themselves one question. If Erdogan hadn’t backed down, who would have suffered more if this deal hadn’t gone through? Sweden was waiting quite a while and has many Western allies. They would probably have been fine for a while longer. But the European Union would suddenly have had a very unpleasant fox in their henhouse if this deal had been made. Sometimes no deal is better than a bad deal. If NATO gains Sweden and we still dump Turkey, what have we really lost?