One Delay Or Another

Issue #190

Problem: New TV won’t fit in the trunk. Solution: Put someone in the trunk to hold it.

Problem: No rope to tow a car. Solution: You guessed it.

In this week’s issue:

• FMs meet as Sweden bid, Russia sanctions top agenda

• Özel’s gesture towards HEDEP draws backlash

• Erdoğan calls Netanyahu the “Butcher of Gaza”

• EC reports on “state of play” in EU-Turkey relations

• Turkish lira gains and losses

• Bulldozer on parade

Also, do read Eray Görgülü’s preview of today’s high level CHP-İYİ Party meeting and the latest rumblings on joint opposition candidates for the 2024 local elections.

Slouching towards bafflement. Source

This week, Pres. Erdoğan ranked number 5 on Politico’s class of 2024 list for the most influential people in Europe. As in past years, he was in the ‘Doers’ category, which makes one wonder what it takes to get in the ‘Disrupters’ category if Turkey’s delay on Sweden’s NATO bid didn’t do the trick.

There’s no end in sight (yet), but all eyes were on Brussels, where NATO foreign ministers gathered for a summit Tuesday and Wednesday. FM Hakan Fidan met US State Sec. Antony Blinken Tuesday as the latter pushed once more for Sweden’s ratification, saying it should happen “as soon as possible”. Other leaders made similar comments.

For his part, Swedish FM Tobias Billström continued to make optimistic statements, saying Wednesday that Turkey promised ratification “within weeks.” He added there were no new demands from the Turkish government.

A US official mentioned a similar timeline, telling Reuters the process would be “done before the end of the year”. Still, Ankara denied it had given any timetable, according to a separate Reuters report. 

Meanwhile, Politico’s Playbook reports NATO diplomats are increasingly frustrated with the lack of progress on the issue. 

“Frustration is the polite F word diplomats use to describe Turkey's approach to Sweden,” Aaron Stein, chief content officer at War on the Rocks, told Turkey recap. “In private, they would use the less polite F word.”

He added, “Ankara has burned all of its already meager trust with Washington and the level of cynicism expressed over issues ranging from Sweden accession to Russian sanctions is off the charts.” 

And though reports this week indicated Metin Topuz, a former US consulate staffer, was recently released after six years in a Turkish prison, there’s still plenty of frustration left between Ankara and Washington. 

One of the issues is Turkey's apparent role in sanctions evasion, as the FT reported Turkey’s exports of military-linked goods to Moscow have soared in 2023. 

Turkish exports data shows a surge in high-priority goods going to Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, but the shipments were not reflected in those countries’ import data. 

“These large discrepancies suggest that items reported by Turkey as destined for intermediaries were instead being transported directly to Russia,” a team of FT journalists reported. 

This comes as Brian Nelson, Treasury Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, visited Ankara and İstanbul this week, his second visit to Turkey this year. This time, both Russian sanctions as well as Hamas financing were on the agenda.  

“It takes an extreme amount of US diplomatic effort to get Turkey to do the minimum. This is true of NATO accession and with sanctions enforcement,” Stein said, adding he expected Russia to be the focus of Nelson’s visit. 

“Enforcing a global sanctions regime requires a lot of work,” he said.

– Ingrid Woudwijk