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> But turks said no.

No. If the Turks actually said "no," they wouldn't be making demands:

https://www.dw.com/en/nato-turkey-outlines-demands-on-finlan...:

> Turkey's Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu on Sunday outlined demands for Finland and Sweden which seek membership in NATO in response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

> Speaking with Turkish reporters after a meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Berlin, he said that Sweden and Finland must stop supporting terrorists in their countries, provide clear security guarantees and lift export bans on Turkey.

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From the Turkish perspective, why would they allow someone who supports their enemies to join the alliance?

I guess both Swedish and Finnish government would both need to swallow a few frogs to comply with these requirements.

At least, they won't be able to maintain a moral high horse over Turkey any more after complying.

> why would they allow someone who supports their enemies to join the alliance?

Because Russia is still the scarier enemy. If the rest of NATO approves, what is Turkey going to do? Leave NATO and accept eventual invasion?

If I recall correctly, it requires unanimous vote of approval.

Everyone else leaves NATO and sets up NATO2 where Sweden and Finland are members but Turkey is not.

That sounds like a very big and complicated undertaking, both politically and militarily.

Turkey has NATO's second-largest army, for one thing.

Perhaps it's more important to have Turkey in NATO than Sweden and Finland, but I honestly don't know. I hear Finland has a strong army and it's useful to have all of the Baltic Sea countries in NATO.

Turkey's location is incredibly important strategically. They control access to the Black Sea.

Turkey is second-largest based on manpower, right? Time to update that ranking soon: Turkey 775,000 vs Finland 937,000 military personnel available

hahahha :D You missed the fact that every turk born as a soldier when it comes to availability :)

As far as I know, it has to be approved unanimously, so Turkey can say "NO" and nothing will happen. The point is that ... today Turkey makes demands, sure, but tomorrow it's someone else, or event today itself, except that Turkey is more "dramatic" about it. Who knows what Finland and Sweden actually have to "give" in order to join NATO. That's life, and that's also okay.

Which is BTW similar to what's happening to EU: they realized that some states have too much power in the admission process, so they want to "speed up" the process. Probably they will go for a "3/4" of the members have to say YES. That kind of stuff. Same old, same old.

> From the Turkish perspective, why would they allow someone who supports their enemies to join the alliance?

This makes it sound like Sweden does something that other NATO members don't. That's not the case. Sweden supports the SDC in syria, which supports the YPG, which is connected to the PKK. And this is controversial in several of the countries that do this, including the US.

While it's true that it's Sweden applying for membership and not anyone else, the logical thing for Turkey to do here is to try to pressure the whole alliance to adopt some policy change (such as a terror clasification for YPG, and/or no more aid to SDC and connected groups).

Exactly. Turkey's objection doesn't really have much to do with Sweden and Finland, it's more an opportunity for Turkey to get concessions from other NATO members on an issue on which Turkey disagrees with the rest of NATO: the Kurds.

> From the Turkish perspective, why would they allow someone who supports their enemies to join the alliance?

Because the accession process provides Turkey an opportunity to apply leverage against Sweden and Finland to change their behavior. Simply refusing to allow it would gain Turkey nothing and harm them indirectly by weakening (or failing to strengthen) an alliance that Turkey depends on for its own security.

> From the Turkish perspective, why would they allow someone who supports their enemies to join the alliance?

...because neither country is supporting Erdoğan's enemies? The dictator is just posturing for his own people, he'll never actually dare to vote against every other country in NATO.

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