engaged in negotiations to enter NATO, the Scandinavian country must manage the anger caused in many countries by the extremist Rasmus Paludan, which burned a copy of the Muslim religious book before the Turkey Embassy.
by Anne-Françoise VOIST (Malmö (Sweden), regional correspondent)
For Stockholm, the priority is now to avoid at all costs that the crisis caused by the Koran autodafé before the Turkish Embassy, January 21, degenerates as that aroused by the publication of twelve caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad in the Danish daily Jyllands Posten, on September 30, 2005. At the beginning of 2006, demonstrations in many Muslim countries had killed around fifty people. Several embassies and consulates of the kingdom had been burnt down, while a boycott was decreed against Danish products.
It then took years to repair the diplomatic relations weakened with these countries, including Turkey. In 2009, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, had delayed the appointment of former Danish Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen as NATO secretary general, reproaching him for the case.
This time, Turkey is directly targeted, since it is in front of its embassies in Stockholm on January 21, then in Copenhagen, on January 27, that the right-wing Dano-Danois Paludan’s right-wing extremist burned a copy of the Koran, promising to start again every Friday until Ankara accepts the membership of Sweden and Finland to NATO.
Even if Rasmus Paludan finally gave it up on February 3, his shots have already had consequences: in recent weeks, demonstrations have taken place in Turkey but also in Pakistan, Iraq or Afghanistan, where the demonstrators burned the Swedish flag. Several countries have officially condemned the Koran autodafé, such as Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, but also organizations such as the Gulf Cooperation Council (CCG) and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation ( OIC). In Cairo, on January 25, Al-Azhar University called “to the boycott of Swedish and Dutch products”.
Istanbul denounces “a psychological war”
Because Rasmus Paludan seems to have aroused vocations: on January 22, an official of the Dutch Islamophobic Pediga movement was filmed, near the Parliament, tearing from the pages of a copy of the Koran, before trampling them. In Oslo, the Islamophobic organization Sian was not allowed to burn this book before the Turkish Embassy. If the police recalled that the Holy Books Autodafé was authorized in the country -as in Sweden or Denmark -, they considered that “security could not be guaranteed”.
Thursday, February 2, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Ankara convened the ambassadors of nine countries, including France, the United States and Sweden, who have decided, in recent days, to temporarily close their diplomatic performances in Turkey , For safety reasons. Most of these countries, like France, also called on their nationals to be vigilant, due to a risk of “high” attack, especially in Istanbul. The Turkish Minister of the Interior, Suleyman Soyu, denounced “a psychological war” carried out against his country.
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