Turkish power continues to block Sweden’s adhesion to NATO on the grounds that it hosts Kurdish activists.
MO12345LEMONDE With AFP
Turkey announced Saturday, January 21, having canceled a planned visit by the Swedish Minister of Defense, after Stockholm authorized an anti -Turkish demonstration in the country’s capital, which must be held during the day. “The visit [of] Pal Jonson in Turkey on January 27 lost its meaning and its meaning, so we canceled the visit,” said Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar. The aim of this visit was to try to remove Ankara’s objections at the entrance to Sweden in NATO.
The authorization given to a Swedish-Danois right-wing extremist, Rasmus Paludan, to demonstrate on Saturday in front of the Turkish Embassy in the Swedish capital angered Ankara. Rasmus Paludan expressed his intention to “burn the Koran” before the legation. A prokurd demonstration is also planned in Sweden on Saturday. Friday, Turkey called on the Sweden ambassador to Ankara to “condemn this provocation action, which clearly constitutes a crime of hatred, in the strongest terms”, according to a diplomatic source.
model hanged
It was the second time in a few days that the Swedish representative in Ankara was summoned by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, after the broadcast in last week of a video showing a hanged model designated as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. This staging had been carried out by a group close to the Rojava committee, an organization which supports the Kurds of Syria.
Turkey has been blocking since May 2022 the entry of Sweden and Finland into NATO by accusing them of hosting Kurdish activists and sympathizers that it deals with “terrorists”, especially those of the workers’ party Kurdistan (PKK) and its allies in northern Syria and Iraq. For Ankara, any possible progress depends on Swedish initiatives to extradite people accused of terrorism by Turkey or having taken part in the 2016 coup attempt against Mr. Erdogan.