Turkey exerting pressure on Sweden and Finland over their alleged harbouring of “terrorists” and refusal to extradite them is nothing new. Ankara has used this method for several years against countries in the Western Balkans, including EU candidate countries.
While Ankara wields investment and aid as a sword of Damocles over the heads of poorer, less powerful countries, when it comes to the nordic duo, it is their NATO application hanging in the balance.
Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, an increasingly nervous Sweden and Finland moved to join the North Atlantic Alliance by filing applications in May. With the consensus that all 30 member states needed to finalise the accession process, Turkey saw an opportunity.
Turkey claims that Sweden supports members of the Kurdish Worker’s Party (PKK), a long-standing enemy of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s regime. Following their application, he said that Sweden joining NATO would make it “a place where representatives of terrorist organisations are concentrated.”
While the PKK is designated as a terrorist organisation by the EU, US, and several other countries, Turkey’s demands to extradite members and the de facto blackmail it is perpetuating against sovereign states is not new.
Another group that Turkey alone considers “terrorists” is followers of self-exiled cleric Fethullah Gulen. Called Gulenists by many and “FETO” by Erdogan, they have been subjected to a harsh crackdown in Turkey and beyond. Once aligned with Erdogan’s government, disagreements and fears from Erdogan that Gulen was getting too powerful resulted in a number of conflicts.
Then, following the failed coup d’état in 2016, Erdogan declared Gulenists terrorists and imprisoned and declared wanted thousands of reported followers. Thousands more fled the country for the west, much more worked in networks of Gulen-affiliated schools and universities worldwide.
Meanwhile, Erdogan started pumping money across borders into countries such as Albania an Kosovo. Mosques were built, hospitals funded and staffed, and aid following natural disasters were sent without hesitation. The countries that received such generosity were grateful, but it came at a cost.
In Albania, Turkey is one of the most prominent investors in infrastructure and business to the tune of billions and has also built thousands of apartments following a devastating earthquake in 2019 that killed 51 and left many homeless.
But in an address to parliament in January 2022, Erdogan was clear that Albania must remove Gulensts from the country if it wants to remain on good terms with Ankara.
“A precondition to our support and brotherhood,” Erdoğan said, “is your commitment to the fight against FETÖ.”
“It deeply wounds us that (FETÖ) has still an area of activity in Albania. It is our sincere expectation that more concrete, decisive and rapid steps will be taken against the FETÖ organisation in Albania in the coming period,” he added.
In 2020, the Turkish Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mevlut Cavusoglu, used similar rhetoric. While signing agreements on economic cooperation, he reminded Albanians that they expected the governments support in handing over Gulenists.
Sure enough, crackdowns started. A network of schools owned by a Dutch company but allegedly linked to Gulen was raided by police while children were on the premises without a court order. Student registers were seized, and officers took photographs of children.
The school denounced it as political pressure and said it was the latest in a long line of administrative and legal attacks against them.
In 2020, Turkish citizen Harun Celik was deported in a move described by the Albanian ombudsman as violating national law and international conventions. Celik entered Albania with a fake passport and tried to seek asylum. He was denied, was detained for five months, and then deported without having the opportunity to appeal the decision. Furthermore, he was deported without a deportation request from a court or prosecution order.
Under Albanian law, the government must notify the border police of a deportation 24 hours beforehand, but it failed to do so. Furthermore, Albanian law also states an individual has the right to leave the country by themselves under a certain deadline.
The EU and various MEPs condemned the move and called on the government to ensure compliance with the Geneva Refugee Convention.
Selami Simsek, who entered the country with Celik, was also set to be deported similarly. He was denied asylum by the Directorate of Asylum and Citizenship on 9 March 2020 and 10 September 2020. He requested the institutions be compelled to accept his request but lost in the first instance. The Administrative Court of Appeal then ruled against the government and prevented him from being deported.
The Court concluded that the Ministry of the Interior violated the law and bypassed UNRC recommendations in trying to expel him.
In July 2020, United Nations rapporteurs found that the Turkish government had signed a number of “secret agreements” with states to enable systematic “extraterritorial abductions and the forcible return of Turkish nationals.
At the time, they reported more than 100 people had been subject to “arbitrary arrests and detention, enforced disappearance, and torture” due to collaboration between the Turkish government and countries such as Albania, Kosovo, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Lebanon, Pakistan, Gabon, Afghanistan, and Cambodia.
A similar story was reported in Kosovo. The national Intelligence Agency unilaterally annulled the residence permits of at least six Turkish citizens. They were then arbitrarily detained and deported in collaboration with the Turkish intelligence services.
Subsequently, a Kosovo Parliamentary Investigation Commission concluded that the six Turkish nationals had been arbitrarily detained, forcibly disappeared and illegally transferred to Turkey in direct violation of Kosovo laws, the European Convention on Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
Similar attempts at deportations were made in Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, were stopped by the courts, while North Macedonia said it had been asked to hand over some 86 alleged Gulenists. At the same time, Turkey continued investing in the countries it asked to comply with its demands and vociferously backed their EU hopes.
Fast forward to 2022, and Turkey is continuing its habit of exerting pressure on sovereign states to wield justice against those it considers enemies. But as it does not hold financial power over stronger and richer Sweden and Finland, instead, it is using their application to NATO while war simmers at their borders.
Exit contacted the European Commission to ask whether taking action against Turkey’s behaviour in the Western Balkans could have prevented a repeat that impacts both EU member states and NATO.
They responded that it is up to individual countries to “make sure their citizens are not being mistreated in the way you describe or their territory is not used for such actions.”
The Commission said they are watching and assessing Turkey’s behaviour in terms of fundamental rights and freedoms and the rule of law and that it expects Ankara to behave constructively and refrain from escalatory steps.
Meanwhile, the Commission has ploughed more than EUR 700 million into the Western Balkans to improve the rule of law in candidate and potential candidate states.
A recent report from the European Court of Auditors, however, found that this was “ineffective” and “not successful” in these countries, including those that have been engaged in deporting Turkish citizens without following legal and judicial due process.
