From the simplistic Western media perspective, this is the issue: "Notionally, this is about the presence of a handful of Kurdish militants in Nordic exile. In reality, this is about the fact that Turkey under (President Recep Tayyip) Erdoğan has come to much more closely resemble Vladimir Putin’s Russia in its fundamental political character than it does any of its fellow NATO members ... Erdoğan’s real agenda is something simpler: blackmail."

It is simplistic, not because its author is a person who had suggested and kept repeating hanging as a criminal punishment for abortion and had no background in research on international issues; the opinion that Turkey is raising objections to Sweden and Finland’s NATO membership to blackmail the alliance is oversimplified because its proponents are not trying to see why Turkey is using this opportunity to raise the misbegotten idea that "a handful of Kurdish militants in Nordic exile" has rightful existence in Western Europe to voice their rightful demands from the Turkish government.

Until the late 1980s, a handful of Kurdish intellectuals needed all the opportunities to raise such concerns about the ethnic problems in Turkey. In the early 1990s, the writer of these lines had a problem with what to do with a Kurdish music cassette after a photographic safari in southeastern Turkey. Our driver had not wanted to keep it in case it could be discovered in his car. I presented the recording to my longtime friend and then-President of Turkey Turgut Özal. I remember his heartbroken gaze at the sky and the wish that escaped his lips: "It should have been better than this."

Not only Kurdish music; but to speak Kurdish in public was not kosher. They would not arrest you, but you would be subject to more than one tough gaze. Kurdish parents could not name their children in Kurdish; they had one Turkish name for official registration and another Kurdish name among their friends and family. Many ethnic restrictions like those since the early days of the republic continued until the beginning of the new millennium. If the 2000s really brought a new beginning, it was felt by Turkey’s Kurds more than anyone else. The Justice and Development Party (AK Party) governments, and finally the Erdoğan administration, reformed more than 50 ethnicity-related restrictive practices in the last 20 years. Did Turkey publicize these reforms heavily around the world? No, it did not. To begin with, we were not happy to be that late in Europe solving such basic human-rights-related issues. When I was making a presentation on that issue at a meeting of the International Press Institute, I sadly observed sniggering international journalists smiling under the mustache.

By then, there were some nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) touting social, economic and linguistic reform for the heavily Kurdish areas in the country. But, almost overnight, all those sincerely Kurdish and honestly civilistic in their approach to the concept of change, disappeared: either the organizers were killed in murders by unknown perpetrators, or they were forced to leave the Kurdish provinces. Now, the whole show was stolen by the PKK, an armed terrorist movement. While those civilian Kurdish NGOs could not collect enough donations to rent a local office building, the PKK had enough resources to wage war against NATO’s second-largest army! Now we know everything about that organization and the forces behind it: as they say, the rest is history.

Now, there are thousands of PKK terrorists who fled from Turkey, Iraq and Syria living in Germany, Sweden and other European Union countries. There is physical evidence of Swedish-provided heavy artillery and ammunition captured in PKK hideouts in the mountainous regions of Iraq and Syria. It is not a handful of "Kurdish militants in Nordic exile." There is a member of parliament in Sweden who fought as a terrorist in Iran and Turkey and is a wanted criminal in both countries. The number of PKK members in Sweden and Finland is higher than the number of active PKK terrorists in the Turkish-Iraqi mountains; Turkey is winning its fight against terrorism and many PKK members are ending up in those countries.

Turkey is not blackmailing NATO about Sweden and Finland joining the Western military alliance. Turkey is simply trying to have these two countries change their laws and stop providing safe havens to PKK members. The terrorists are not only operating a widespread propaganda machine in those countries, but they also impacting the policies of those countries.

The Turkish government demands that the two countries demonstrate in concrete terms that they have ceased to support the PKK terrorist group and its Syrian wing, the YPG. What Ankara means with "concrete terms" is that they abolish all embargoes targeting Turkey’s defense industry: Sweden and Finland, specifically, and several EU countries, generally, embargoing Turkey’s defense industry investments claiming that they are targeting the Kurdish minority in the country. Several media outlets claim that there was a nationwide crackdown against the Kurdish political movement. Even U.S. President Joe Biden, in his interview with the New York Times Editorial Board on Jan. 19, 2020, wrongly claimed that the Kurdish population in Turkey wanted to participate in the political process in Parliament but Erdoğan would not allow them. Biden, therefore, speaks for them and he wants Erdoğan to "pay a price."

In order to make sure that Biden and some other NATO leaders understand what Turkey fights with, and Turkey has no "Kurdish problem" but a "terrorism problem," Turkey needed a wide and effective platform to voice its views. NATO membership requires the satisfaction of one major criterion: Member countries should support each other’s legitimate national concerns, not the positions promoted by terrorists.

This week, Madrid is going to host NATO leaders in a summit to finalize the 2030 Strategic Concept for the alliance. Many consider the upcoming meeting to be the most important summit of the last 21 years. Erdoğan has already announced that he will strongly respond if any leader promotes an anti-Turkish agenda in Madrid. He will tell NATO partners that Turkey is not against NATO’s expansion, and Sweden and Finland’s inclusion in the alliance; but he will declare yet again that Turkey does not want more allies who do not understand, appreciate and support Turkey’s fight against terrorism.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg seems to be understanding of Turkey’s point. He said, "no other NATO ally suffered more terrorist attacks than Turkey." If NATO wants to achieve intra-alliance solidarity, it should not allow its members to undermine each other’s internal security. Germany, France and the U.S., with their material support to the PKK and its extensions, are materially breaching their treaty obligations, and Turkey does not need more allies like that.

Turkey made its choice in 1952 and joined NATO amid the exaggerated threat of the Soviet Union on Turkey’s eastern provinces and the Bosporus. Soviet leader Josef Stalin’s menace to the territorial integrity of Turkey then was not any more than the threat our allies pose today when they do not understand what Turkey is struggling against. NATO should show this week in Madrid that it appreciates Turkey’s objections, especially Sweden’s support of PKK terrorism. Failing to do this would be a catastrophic event for NATO; it would put itself between a rock and a hard place. It would then answer the question as to whether it wants to keep Turkey as a member.