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Comment by rossdavidh | Hacker News Reader

My impression is that Turkey does not believe the rest of NATO takes the threat to it from some Kurdish organizations seriously. I have no access to unbiased data to say whether there is any actual significant threat to Turkey's security from Kurdish groups in Sweden, but it does appear that Turkey actually believes this to be a problem.

The main risk here is that, now that Finland is a member of NATO, it is not clear that Sweden will feel itself needing to make any concessions to Turkey, but Turkey may still want to demand them. I would rather that Sweden be formally in NATO. Given that the four biggest Scandinavian nations have agreed to practically merge their air forces, whether or not Sweden is an actual member may not matter too much, though.

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For the Russian threat in particular, I simply don't see a way for Russia to attack Sweden without inherently having to attack Finland, Norway or Denmark also. Sure, they might fly some planes & bomb some things, but that won't win a war by itself. There's just no viable beach head attack route purely from international waters to Sweden -- the defense plan for the Baltic sea is based on mine blockades, and Swedes excel at submarine operations, so I'd think a direct attack by sea from such a singular direction would be pretty hopeless, if the attack really is constrained by not wanting to touch the neighbors.

On the other hand, the cost for military aggression has never been lower. All easy western retaliations, such as sanctions, have been spent. A few rockets, sent from a far, towards for example Gotland, will cost almost no political capital, since it has already been spent. It will not threaten Sweden's soverignity, but it will threaten it's security.

And why? As a retaliation, for example. To dissuade more Swedish equipment to be sent to Ukraine. Or to rally support for some imaginary cause. Russia is completely unreliable.

Except NATO has said they are treating attacks Finland and Sweeden as an Attack on NATO while they go through the application/approval process. attacking Sweden would be tantamount to starting WWIII even Russia's puppet state allies wouldn't back Putin if he picked that fight. Russia can barely hold its own now on one front

No they haven't. The different statenents are much more careful than this.

Things may change based on the upcoming Turkish presidential election. If Ergodan gets kicked out, Turkish policy to Sweden will change.

The thing most people on the West doesn't seem to get is, there are issues that predate Erdogan. Such as this one, whoever replaces him will make similar requests in a less childish more diplomatic way. There is legitimate concern across the voter base that the West is supporting Kurdish terrorist groups. No matter which party wins if they want to be re-elected they will need to address the same concerns.

While I've seen it reported as of late that fear over Kurdish groups is Turkey's official stance on holding back on voting Sweden in, the original reason given by Erdogan was over an isolated incident where a far-right anti-Islamist burned a Quran[1]. Pretty par for Erdogan's course, but I expect he's likely trying to double-down on appealing to his conservative voter-base for the upcoming election. With this matter of Sweden joining NATO, the outcome of this election has pretty grand implications on the global theater.

Add this spicy bit of news from today seems to indicate that Erdogan realizes what is at stake[2]

[1]: https://apnews.com/article/nato-politics-sweden-government-t...

[2]: https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/turkey-elections-erdogan-...

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