Meet the man who delayed Turkey's approval of Sweden's Nato bid

By Ragip Soylu - MEE Turkey Bureau Chief

After two years of shouting matches, burnt Swedish flags, a couple of summits in freezing capitals where leaders were forced to smile and lots of “I won’t do it”, here we are: Turkey finally ratified Sweden's membership to Nato. Read the details here.

The debate in the Turkish parliament on Tuesday lasted for hours, but eventually in a late-night vote the ruling coalition parties, as well as main opposition CHP, voted for Sweden’s accession.

But why did it take so long? Especially considering we had a deal in place since July, when Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan agreed to approve Stockholm’s bid in return for the United States selling a multi-billion F-16 fighter jet package and Canada dropping its arms embargo on Ankara.

There are various reasons, and there have been lots of hiccups. Like the 7 October Hamas-led attack and subsequent devastating war on Gaza, which more or less coincided with the opening of the Turkish parliament. Or, for example, the fact that US President Joe Biden hasn’t been picking up the phone and calling Erdogan to speed up things up. Or the lack of trust between Ankara and Washington.

But there has been another obstacle in the way that no one has much talked about: Fuat Oktay, chairman of the Turkish parliament’s commission on foreign affairs. He alone has delayed the ratification since October.

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Fuat Oktay put the brakes on Sweden ratification and no one knew

Fuat Oktay has climbed the political the ladder through performing excellently as a bureaucrat. His time in academia spanned business management, manufacturing and industrial engineering, and he made a name for himself when working as chairman of Turkey’s emergency response administration, AFAD, between 2012-2016. Think tankers and relief workers were impressed by his successes in the role, where he created the “perfect refugee camp” by using all available government resources.

Oktay’s success propelled him to become the undersecretary for the prime ministry. Later, Erdogan appointed him as the country’s first-ever vice president in 2018.

There, he took a back seat. Oktay represented Erdogan at home and abroad when the president was unavailable, and conducted a study on the presidential system to figure out which parts of the recently implemented scheme were failing, which has never been published.

Everyone expected him to continue his role as vice president after Erdogan won another term last year. Yet the night before his second term as vice president was going to be announced, Erdogan decided to use him in parliament instead, as he’d already been elected as an MP. Oktay didn’t expect that, I’m told.

He became chairman of the commission on the foreign affairs, keeping face after a potentially embarrassing switch.

Then came Sweden's accession process.

Several sources familiar with the issue told Middle East Eye that Oktay visited Erdogan in October, around the time that parliament was opening.

He made a case to the president: Turkey’s western allies, especially the US, weren't taking the Turkish parliament seriously. The Biden administration was telling Ankara, for example, that it couldn’t get the F-16 deal through Congress because of separation of powers in the US political system, and the president couldn’t simply get senators to do his bidding. Yet Washington expected Erdogan to do the very same, implying that Turkey was less democratic than the United States. Oktay told Erdogan that parliament must sit on the Sweden issue, take its time and discuss it. And eventually, who knows, they could secure more concessions from the Swedes or the Americans.

Of course, Turkey has legitimate security concerns regarding the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) presence, recruitment and financing efforts in Sweden. But Oktay also wasn’t particularly positive about tying Sweden’s accession to an F-16 deal, which Erdogan made with Biden through their foreign ministers.

Erdogan, according to MEE’s sources, agreed with Oktay’s plan and sentiments. He also didn’t want to say “no” to his former vice president, who still carries a great level of influence and credit with Erdogan.

Oktay then communicated this strategy to the party leadership at a meeting, telling the ruling Justice and Development Party’s politburo how he was going to proceed.

Then came the 7 October attack on Israel, the destruction of Gaza and the killing of thousands of Palestinians, which gave Oktay more room to manoeuvre in, as there was little appetite to help the West while it backed Israel’s escalating assault.

Oktay cherished his new initiative. He told the media that the parliament wouldn’t rush on Swedish accession, insisting that Stockholm must do more to convince MPs to vote for it. He met the Swedish ambassador in Ankara, reiterating his expectations on the steps to be taken against the PKK.

A Biden phone call with Erdogan in December changed things. Erdogan told his American counterpart that he would advance the bill through parliament and Sweden would become a Nato member soon enough.

When I briefly interviewed Oktay in December, he was still happy.

“People should learn to take the Turkish parliament seriously,” Oktay said, smiling. “They always expect that we need to convince our western allies. Now they need to learn that we also need convincing.”

The next day, he called the foreign affairs commission for a meeting and quickly advanced the bill to the floor.

Worth mentioning

• Turkish opposition media was full of stories last week about how Central Bank Governor Hafize Gaye Erkan’s father was allegedly wreaking havoc at the bank, shouting at the employees, dismissing them from the duty at will, and acting like he is the chief of operations at the building. Erkan’s defenders say her father and mother have been a constant presence at the bank to help with childcare (her son is just 14 months old). Many rumours were reported that Erkan would soon be fired by Erdogan over the furore, and Cevdet Akcay would be hired as her replacement. The consensus in Ankara is that Erdogan wouldn’t replace Erkan until after the local elections in March, if he was indeed considering firing her. On Wednesday he dismissed the allegations about her as “insane rumours”. If Erkan’s father is actually creating a scene at the Central Bank, she might just get off the hook with a warning, as there’s no indication that she’s put a foot wrong when it comes to monetary policy.
• There was yet another sign last week that Erdogan’s alliance with the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) is being tested, as intra-state tensions brew. A district governor in the Kurdish-majority city Diyarbakir has been accusing of assaulting an imam for not properly reciting a government-handed sermon, which commemorated soldiers killed while fighting the PKK. The public employees syndicate, Memur-Sen, which is close to Erdogan’s party, publicly condemned the district governor for using violence instead of legal channels against a fellow civil servant. Then, many other district governors throughout the country, most of whom sported the moustache that has become almost an emblem of the MHP, attacked Memur-Sen, blaming it for not standing up for national values. The interior minister said he has launched an investigation on the issue.
• Details of two curious flight paths of US military cargo planes have raised the possibility that Washington may be using a military base in Turkey to supply Israel in its war on Gaza. Read about it here.

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