Nah. He is also known for instant turns, when he thinks he has bargained enough or when it happens to suit the image he wants to present.
For example say he decided “Vilnius is the moment I stop bargaining, but only at last minute. Lets see what concessions I can get out of them until then” or so on.
It is exactly on brand for Erdogan to suddenly turn his position and go “what problem, there is no problem. What I said last week there was a problem… no no no, I Erdogan The First have solved problem quickly in only few days. Yes we made a deal, I negotiated amazing deal, deal solves the problem. There is No problem anumore. It’s solved.”
What happened to solve the problem? Nothing, Erdogan just stopped insisting there was a problem in first place and well some flowery language on top to make it look like it was deal to end the problem and not a climb down to end the problem.
You do also have to remember that a lot of this was around the elections and stoking the flames of a boogeyman (the PKK), so now that they’re done and over with it was just a matter of time.
It sounds like it’s going through because Sweden and Turkey have worked together to address legitimate concerns about Turkish national security? But I don’t see any mention of the EU talks; the article neither dismissing them or addressing them at all (unless I’m just dumb right now and am mis-read something. So I’m still wondering if those talks are “off the table”, or if someone could please correct me about my misunderstandings
Nah. Sweden doesn’t seem to have given any firm commitments about security beyond “We work on it together”, which can mean exactly as little or as much it fancies Sweden after they are in NATO.
To me this is simply “Erdogan has decided he has seen this bargaining to completion and it would look really bad, if this thing wasn’t resolved by Vilnius. Pressure started to mount with This is starting to be embarrassing Recep from rest of NATO” and he simply called it good.
Nothing needs to have been changed on this exact moment, He just decided he has tried long enough and has exhausted the concessions and no point dragging it on. Instead of benefit, it started to be more hindrance in his calculation to keep this going.
He can now tan in the limelight in Vilnius as the leader who saved the situation at last minute. Mind you the problem was of his own creation, but hey those are the best kind of problems. You have exact control and can “solve the problem” at exactly the most suitable last minute moment. Actual problems are harder for “last minute saviour” credibility collection. You might actually fail to solve the problem and thats not good.
I think the US congress would veto Biden’s approval (or already has), if I’m reading correctly? But I can’t find any follow-up as to what actually made the deal go through.
I also wonder if the EU is going to reopen talks about Turkey joining. But seems like Sweden has also done a lot of legwork already to jibe with Turkish security concerns, so maybe that was enough? I’m curious too
Talks weren’t suspended because the EU hates Turkey (national politics and sentiment nonwithstanding Berlaymont just doesn’t care about those things) but because the accession procedure went nowhere, and in some areas backslided.
As such reopening is contingent on nothing but Turkey actually taking its prospect of joining seriously. I wonder if Erdogan understands that “Sweden reinvigorating Turkey’s application” pretty much means Sweden giving Turkey private lessons in how to be less of a shithole… in any case it doesn’t surprise me that Sweden agreed to such language.
Didn’t he just say either yesterday or today that he wouldn’t back Sweden joining NATO until Turkey was allowed into the EU? I hope his neck wasn’t broken from that whiplash.
Luckily, being dictator in a post truth environment apparently voids the need for consistancy. Something something always at war with oceania something insert comment about the prescience of some old/dead person.
I think the US delegation took him aside and said something along the lines of “alright chucklefuck, going forward, if you want parts and technical support for any of the massive amounts of extremely advanced military shit we’ve sold you for decades, you’re going to stop fucking around on the Sweden accession”.
At some point we have to start blaming the people reading this stuff. I’m not saying that social media platforms shouldn’t try to address this problem, but clearly they don’t know how to, and don’t care. That’s why we’re here, after all.
It’s misinformation directed at a certain target group. I bet you that there’s misinformation out there directed at people like you and me that we’ve fallen for.
Oh surely. But I personally I would consider that a failure on my part. I’m not saying it’s all on users, but I do wish people thought more about what they read.
I agree, but governments are poor at educating adults. (Well, they're poor at educating children, too.) There's no way the situation will improve by blaming the problem on the users.
In the past I would have agreed with you, but in the age of increasingly sophisticated AI being able to nearly perfectly imitate people’s voices or images, I think we need to start asking more of social media companies. When truth starts looking indistinguishable from fiction we’re going to need to find new ways of parsing which is which. Fact checking will be extremely important.
The price is for Sweden to push for talks to be brought up again. That is not the same thing as letting Turkey join the EU. Though it should also be said the Swedish prime minister said no new terms have been agreed since November.
Won’t happen, not with the whole Hungary mess and the rise of the political far-right going on. No government would risk political suicide and the end of the Union for Sweden’s NATO membership.
You can’t fool us Erdogan, we’ve seen this move before.
By tomorrow he’ll have new demands. He’ll demand Sweden form a space agency and plant the Turkish flag on the moon or something like that, mark my words.
Yes yes I signed it just need to find my stamps to put it in the mail. Just one more thing it is very important please can you arrange to hold the Eurovision in Ankara next year instead?
If the goal was to extract concessions, then any actual opposition to it was nothing more than pantomime and theatre. Presumably he finagled a deal he's happy with.
Now Hungary is a different beast, since Orban has recently been much more warm and cuddly with Putin than Turkey has, but perhaps with Turkey acceding to the arrangement they'll play some follow-the-fascist-leader and fall in line.
bbc.co.uk
Active