Norway lifts arms embargo on Turkey, paving way for boost in defense exports

ANKARA — Norway has lifted roughly half a decade of defense export restrictions on its NATO ally Turkey, the Turkish Foreign Ministry said Wednesday.

Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesperson Oncu Keceli announced the move after a phone call between the top Turkish diplomat, Hakan Fidan, and his Norwegian counterpart, Espen Barth Eide, earlier Wednesday.

Eide told Fidan that “Norway has decided to lift the defense industry restrictions imposed on Turkey in 2019,” Keceli said. “Fidan expressed pleasure with the decision, adding that such restrictions are not in line with the spirit of alliance.”

The Norwegian Foreign Ministry hasn’t released a readout of the call as of this writing. Al-Monitor has reached out to the ministry for comment. 

Norway imposed the embargo in 2019 in response to Turkey’s military incursion in Syria against the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces. Ankara equates the SDF with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has waged an armed campaign against Turkey since 1984 for Kurdish self-rule inside the country. While Turkey’s NATO allies, including the United States, consider the PKK a terrorist organization, the SDF remains the main ally of the US-led international coalition against the Islamic State. 

According to a report released by the Norwegian Foreign Ministry in 2020, Oslo “decided in autumn 2019 that it would no longer process new license applications for exports of defense-related products and dual-use items for military use to Turkey.” The report added that “exports under licenses that had already been issued were also withheld.”

According to the Norwegian government, defense exports from Oslo to Ankara stood at nearly $4 million in 2018 but dropped roughly to $1 million in 2020 due to the restrictions. Turkey’s defense purchases were largely focused on software, communication equipment and sensors.

Wednesday’s move comes as the latest in a series of signs of the easing of strained ties between Turkey and its NATO allies after Ankara gave its nod to Finland’s and Sweden’s joining the alliance.

Turkey’s objections to Finland’s and Sweden’s accession to NATO increased the frustration among the alliance’s capitals toward Ankara. The two Nordic countries applied to join the bloc in May 2022 after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the alliance’s expansion became a key policy agenda of the Biden administration. 

Turkey approved the Finnish bid in March of last year and the Swedish bid in January, with lengthy negotiations seeing the lifting of arms embargoes against Ankara by several NATO members, including Sweden, Finland, Canada and the Netherlands.