Sweden’s long and winding road to NATO
Lisbeth Aggestam, Isabell Schierenbeck and Arne F. Wackenhut discuss how the Kurdish diaspora shapes Sweden’s bid for a NATO membership and, in turn, its relations with Turkey.
When Sweden decided to overturn more than 200 years of non-alignment and rapidly apply for a NATO membership following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the expectation was that Sweden, together with Finland, would be swiftly accepted into the alliance. Since the end of the Cold War, Sweden has steadily moved closer to NATO through a range of partnership agreements and has contributed significantly to security in the Baltic Sea region. This is one of the reasons why most NATO members rapidly approved the Swedish membership application, except for Turkey and Hungary.
The Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, demanded that the Swedish government first address concerns related to perceived national security threats by certain Turkish-origin diaspora groups in Sweden before ratifying Sweden’s membership application. The historic decision by the Swedish government to join NATO has thus had a disproportionate impact on some Turkish diaspora groups, who suddenly found themselves in the whirlwind of global politics — especially Swedes with a Kurdish background who voiced their fears and anxieties about potential deportation to Turkey.
In this blogpost, we draw upon our recent article in International Affairs to unpack how the Kurdish diaspora shaped Sweden’s bid to join NATO, and, in turn, Swedish–Turkish relations. This case allows us to argue that diasporas play an increasingly important role in shaping the foreign policies of western liberal democratic states.
Swedish–Turkish bilateral relations
Swedish–Turkish relations have fluctuated significantly over the last two decades, with consecutive Swedish governments trying to balance two roles: as a friend, supporting Turkey’s bid for EU membership, and as a stern critic of Turkey’s autocratic turn and human rights record. A particularly sore point in the relationship has been the sympathy and support that the Swedish governments and political parties, mainly on the centre left, have shown towards the Kurdish struggle for minority rights and self-determination. While the Turkish government has framed the situation of Kurdish minorities as a national security issue, Sweden has viewed it more through the lens of human and minority rights.
The Kurdish diasporas and their influence on Swedish–Turkish relations
Sweden is home to a sizable Kurdish diaspora with a variety of different geographical backgrounds. The issue of NATO membership and, in particular, the resulting Turkish demands sparked protests among Kurdish diaspora communities who claimed that the Turkish demands conflicted with Sweden’s core liberal and democratic values.
There are four concrete ways the Kurdish diaspora has influenced Swedish foreign policy. To begin with, Sweden’s political landscape welcomes participation from a wide range of actors, thus enabling them to shape the foreign policy process. Solidarity with the Kurdish struggle for freedom and self-determination enjoys significant political support in the Swedish parliament, and several politicians with Kurdish backgrounds have successfully entered politics. The intersection of shared values and Sweden’s identity as a moral, humanitarian power has facilitated this political coalition in Swedish foreign policy.
Second, the Kurdish diaspora effectively framed and linked their fears of transnational repression to broader normative liberal principles, such as the rule of law and freedom of speech and assembly, thereby enhancing the legitimacy of their claims. As Kurdo Baksi, a prominent Swedish–Kurdish opinion-maker and informal leader argued, ‘I don’t think we should join NATO’ if it involves giving ‘up our freedom of speech, democracy, equality, and the freedom of press act from 1766’.
Third, Swedish–Kurdish political and intellectual elites exhibited effective leadership and created cohesion by mobilizing passive members of their community and engaging them in grassroot activities. Through a combination of political activism inside and outside parliament, the Kurdish diaspora managed to project a unified image of collective action to capture the attention of foreign policy-makers and influence Swedish public opinion.
Finally, the Kurdish diaspora successfully domesticated Swedish foreign policy by constraining the autonomous decision-making power of the government in its negotiations with Turkey. The bipartisan consensus on how to manage the diplomatic relations with Turkey over the NATO membership bid broke down and became politicized in the public debate.
Conclusion
As our research on the Kurdish diaspora in Sweden shows, diasporas have emerged as a new type of transnational civil society actor in foreign policy. They can serve as facilitators and sources of soft and material power in bilateral state relations. However, diasporas can also make diplomacy more complicated and challenge traditional assumptions about agency, sovereignty and territoriality in foreign policy.
It is important to remember that Sweden’s long and winding road to NATO membership is closely linked to several other issues, such as Turkey’s negotiations with the United States. What our study does show is the unexpected consequences that diaspora mobilization can have on negotiations between states and its influence on transnational state–society relations in foreign policy.
Read more about this topic in the full article ‘Sweden, NATO and the role of diasporas in foreign policy’. It was published in the November 2023 issue of International Affairs and is free to access.
Lisbeth Aggestam is an Associate Professor at the Department of Political Science and the Centre for European Research at Gothenburg University.
Isabell Schierenbeck is a Professor of Political Science at the School of Global Studies, University of Gothenburg.
Arne F. Wackenhut is a Senior Lecturer in Global Studies at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden.
All views expressed are individual not institutional.
