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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 23, 2023

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CULTURE WAR IN FINLAND/SWEDEN/TURKEY: Nordic Cartoon Crisis 2.0

Nordic cartoon crisis 1.0, of course, was the one in 2005, as cartoons of the Islamic prophet Mohammed in a Danish magazine (reprinted by a number of instances the world over) precipitated riots all around the Muslim world. Of course the same issues would be replicated later on in different contexts, like with the Charlie Hebdo shooting.

This time, what is at stake is the Finnish/Swedish NATO membership quest, seemingly derailed by cartoons and other mockery of the Turkish PM Erdogan, in Finnish and Swedish magazines, and various other issues, including, once again, the relationship between free speech and Islam.

As is known, few months after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Finland and Sweden applied for NATO. NATO operates by consensus, and applications require affirmation by all current member states to proceed. All countries expect two, Hungary and Turkey, have done this. Hungary might still cause its own issues, but what is currently at stake, however, is the Turkish veto.

One issue has been the Finnish and Swedish refusal to export weapons to Turkey. Finland doesn’t have a formal ban but stopped exports in 2019, after the Turkish invasion of Northern Syria. Finland has, however, already indicated that it will review this line, and it would probably be odd for two countries to be in a military alliance but one refusing military exports to another.

Indeed, the Finnish and Swedish governments have been lobbying for United States to release F-16 fighters to Turkey in hopes that a blatant bribe might do the trick of easing the membership process. The WSJ has indicated this might indeed be what the US will offer. I wouldn’t be too confident that this, alone, would be enough, and the Greeks might have something to say about this, as well.

However, more important has been Turkey’s claim that Sweden and Finland, claiming that these countries foster terrorists, chiefly those of PKK, ie. the Kurdistan Workers Party, which has run a decades-long armed campaign against the Turkish state. Turkey has also referred to the "Fethullahist Terrorist Organisation", ie. the Gülen movement, but this seems secondary, and it continues to be hazy what all Fethullahist Terrorist Organization is even supposed to encompass.

Of course, everyone who has ever debated with a Turk on the Internet on, like, anything, knows the salience of the PKK issue on the Turkish mindset. It’s safe to say that I’m never going to understand how this conflict truly feels to Turks, as Finland doesn’t even have any equivalent separatist groups. (There’s one in Åland, but frankly, as long as there was some form of security against Russians making a sudden move on the territory, most Finns wouldn’t give a whit if Åland became independent.) As such, I'm of course be going to discuss this from a Finnish perspective. I understand the Turkish perspective will be different.

It's important to remember that PKK continues to be a banned movement in Finland and Sweden, like in all EU countries. This has been challenged by EU courts, but the formal ban holds. In practice, this means that the Turkish government has demanded the deportations of various numbers of suspected terrorists, as well as expressed anger over expressions of speech in these countries, such as PKK flags featuring in public demonstrations.

The governments of Finland and Sweden have essentially responded to Turkish deportation requests by stating that they will work with Turkey on this issue but it’s also impossible to automatically to as Turkey has requested on this subject. A memorandum between Turkey, Finland and Sweden was signed on summer, but the countries disagree what it means.

One problem is that Finland and Sweden aren’t countries where politicians can just deport people at the point of finger. It’s up to courts to decide whether this can happen, and the courts have been reticent on this one, considering that there are doubts as to how many of the fingered suspected terrorists are terrorists at all, or just politically inconvenient for Turkey. There’s nothing, in practice, preventing deportation to Turkey – in October the courts extradited a bank robber.

When it comes to the demonstrations with PKK flags, these are generally done by the sort of far-left groups that have been, and continue to be, opposed to NATO membership, Kurdish separatist solidarity having been an important part of far-left movements in both countries for years. As such, the threat of Turks keeping Finland and Sweden out of NATO won’t of course keep them from demonstrating with PKK flags, if anything it gives them more reason to do so.

One such recent demonstration in Sweden involved an Erdogan doll being hung in effigy, by a group called the Swedish Solidarity Committee for Rojava – Rojava being the Kurdish autonomous statelet in North Syria, known for fighting ISIS and then fighting Turkish-supported Islamist Syrian rebel groups and the Turkish forces occupying Syrian territory as a part of their claimed anti-terrorist operation, Rojava’s leading groups being affliated to the same Kurdish political family as the PKK.

Soon after this, Erdogan made a demand for the extradition of 130 (claimed) terrorists by Finland and Sweden, interpreted to be a reaction to this personal affront. Swedish far-left magazine Flamman has reacted by organizing an Erdogan cartoon contest, and Finnish cartoonist Ville Ranta summarized the issue in a cartoon with an angry Erdogan demanding an increasing amount of terrorists for all affronts.

The most recent turn is the notorious Danish far-right provocateur Rasmus Paludan burning the Quran in front of the Turkish embassy. Paludan has conducted Quran-burning protests for a long time, it’s sort of a trademark for him, so it’s not surprising he’d utilize this issue for his one-man crusade as well. The Turkish government is predictably hopping mad and there are large protests in Turkey against this.

While this has been going on, the Finnish and Swedish governments have been in a hard place. Sweden has a right-wing government and Finland has a left-wing government, but both are reacting rather similarly: making noises about how the rule of law and freedom of speech are of course very important but that they also respect the Turkish government’s wishes and that they are sorry about these provocations.

And, of course, if one takes a strong free speech perspective (it’s arguable that these countries don’t always take it in other issues), it should for sure be a part of free speech to be able to fly a flag or burn a Quran if one wishes, no matter how provocatively this is viewed. One can’t help but think one point is that an authoritarian country wishes to spread its authoritarian norms concerning these issues to other countries as well. Is that a suitable price for NATO membership? To many it is.

A particular issue for Finland is a sneaking suspicion that it appears to be Sweden that Turkey really has a problem with, even moreso now after the Quran burning protest, as Erdogan has directly referred to this affair as reason to not support Sweden. If you look at the exact wording, you can of course interpret "not expect to support" in various different ways, but it's still evidentially something that makes the issue ever more complicated.

As such a frequent topic is whether, if an opportunity presents itself, Finland should just cut Sweden loose, if that it takes, even if it this means knifing a longtime ally in the back after frequent talk about how Sweden and Finland will go through the NATO process together. Not to mention that Swedish and Finnish militaries just plain are almost meant to work together – Sweden has a strong navy and air force but a weak army, Finland is the other way around.

(CONTINUES BELOW)

More of a personal opinion:

All of this just underlines that the way that we have approached NATO is very simplistic, almost thoughtless. It’s basically not an idea that we’re joining an alliance with other nations that might also have demands on us– or that might actually require Finnish soldiers to go somewhere abroad to fight in a war that doesn’t directly affect Finland. Indeed, in practice, it might be Finland that sends troops to Baltic countries to defend them against a Russian invasion, for instance.

At this point, particularly for those who have been crowing for an year about how they wanted to get to NATO all along, the membership has become an ideé fixe, something that just must be done because it must be done, damn the consequences. At the same time, at least some of the pro-NATO voices I’ve talked with in the past have been cooler with the prospect than before. After all, even if we kowtow to Turkey to get in, well – that’s just evidence that we’re so desperate that we can get extorted by whatever other countries there might be wanting some extortion. Danegeld, Dane, etc.

One could even ask if the NATO seems quite as necessary for us now as it did in February 2022. After all, the initial rush of pure fear is gone – Russia has not simply demolished the Ukrainian army as many expected and seems to be in this war for the long haul, making it doubtful whether it could pose an urgent threat to the other neighbors in the short vicinity.

Meanwhile, the Finnish defenses have been bolstered, the national morale is high, and the Ukrainian example means it’s fairly obvious that there is some commitment from the West, to oppose Russian interventions even when not against NATO countries. If the West does all it has done thus far to support Ukraine, it would seem likely it would be predisposed to also do the same things to help Finland. Though not, of course, if the weaponry stocks get depleted before this…

Beyond that, there are still the security commitments from UK and US to continue to be valid, and in some ways that’s what NATO support has meant all along for the many - basically mainly US and perhaps UK (as nuclear countries) guaranteeing that Finland will be safe forever and ever, and will also solve all of our issues for us otherwise. Not exactly the firmest of expectations, considering that American attention is fickle anyway and there have been longstanding voices calling for US to start detaching itself from Europe and concentrate on the Pacific affairs and opposing China.

The point of rushing the NATO membership application was not to be left in a security limbo, but at this very moment, the dangers of limbo seem to be exaggerated. Certainly, if Turkey puts too much trust in just being able to jerk Finland and Sweden around on a chain, she may not get what it wants. After all, what's the point of being in a military alliance if there's a country in there that considers your country negatively from the start and places on it weird and apparently arbitrary burdens that cannot be fulfilled?

After all, there’s more than one national narrative that can scarcely be understood at play. For many Finns, the world “Finlandization”, readily bandied about the willingness of the politicians to cater to Turkish interests, continues to presents a vast trauma – the idea that Finland might eternally be seen as a country that has to cower in front of some authoritarian state for security benefits is none too appealing in Finnish historical memory, whether that state is Soviet Union, modern Russia or Turkey.

(edit: now on Substack in a somewhat edited form)

If the West does all it has done thus far to support Ukraine, it would seem likely it would be predisposed to also do the same things to help Finland

One contrary point here is that previously, the majority in Finland just didn't want to be part of NATO, whereas in Ukraine the situation was more complicated. If Putin had invaded Finland in Feb 2022, I would have been equally outraged but perhaps less willing to help a country that had decided in advance it didn't want my help.

Now things have changed. Finland has applied to join NATO. If a rogue NATO member is now going to veto that for a bad reason, that's not Finland's fault. I would urge Finland not to back down on the free speech issue. This puts some pressure on Turkey.

I would urge Finland not to back down on the free speech issue. This puts some pressure on Turkey.

Or just wait out the elections. Erdogan has a habit of seeking conflict with other nations in the run-up to elections.

OTOH much of the West is a part of the EU, which is supposed to have some sort of a security dimension and where EU countries would have presumably felt obliged to support simply for that reason.

Obviously, seeing the amount of support ukraine got, if your government was still standing in the evening, you would have been swamped with help, in all likelihood boots on the ground. It sounds theatrical, and the decline-of-the-west crew doesn't want to hear it, but europeans are ready to die for finland. Our pisa average would go to shit without you.

He said 'finland didn't want to be in nato', but isn't it fair to say that can to a large extent be explained by a fear of angering russia? They didn't build a large land army because of the swedish threat.

Yes, like 90 % would be fear of Russia. Almost the whole previous debate on NATO could be summarized as "We have to join NATO because Russia is so scary" vs. "We cannot join NATO because Russia is so scary". The actual invasion rather changed the scales of that equation.

It sounds theatrical, and the decline-of-the-west crew doesn't want to hear it, but europeans are ready to die for finland.

This is something that should really be expanded upon at some point related to Ukraine. One firm meme among the pro-Russian crowd is that weak and flabby Europeans are surely not willing to experience any hardships for Ukraine and will thus knuckle under even the Russian threat of cutting off gas. The idea of Europeans fighting against Russia for Ukraine (or for liberalism or democracy, or "gay pride parades in Kiev", as it is often glibly summarized) would surely be even more ridiculous.

Well, Europeans aren't (apart from individual "mercenaries", as the pro-Russians tend to call pro-Ukraine volunteers) actually fighting Russia, but the gas threat turned out to be a damp squib. If the threat of Europeans going cold moved the equation to any direction, it probably made the commitment of firm pro-Ukrainians even firmer. Furthermore, at least the idea that this could lead to a general war with European boys dying for Ukraine at least exists and has a nonzero change - but it hasn't led to any appreciably-sized peace movement, perhaps apart from some individual countries.

Looks like those gay pride parades in Kiev really are that appealing for weakling Westerners, huh?