Sweden’s new cabinet sees the lack of Kurdish ties as facilitating NATO’s path
(Bloomberg) — Sweden’s new government sees itself in a better position than the previous government to persuade Turkey to ratify its accession to NATO.
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The lack of ties to Kurdish groups is “a positive point to start from” in talks with Turkey and separates the new cabinet from Magdalena Andersson’s Social Democratic boss, according to Tobias Billström, who was appointed foreign minister on Tuesday.
Ratification is “a matter of time,” he said. – It looks very positive.
Turkey has opposed Sweden and Finland joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, but an agreement hammered out in June allowed the process to move forward. The Nordic countries are trying to show President Recep Tayyip Erdogan that they are cooperating to fight terrorism.
Turkey and Hungary are the only ones among the 30-member defense alliance that have yet to ratify their accession to the bloc.
Sweden’s Social Democrats had previously agreed to expand cooperation with the Syrian-Kurdish political party PYD, in exchange for support from a Kurdish lawmaker. Turkey sees the PYD as inseparable from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, designated a terrorist organization by the European Union.
Andersson’s government has denied any cooperation with the PYD’s armed branch or PKK.
In one incident earlier this year, representatives of Sweden’s Left Party, which supported Andersson’s government, posed for pictures with a PKK flag at a political event. Andersson criticized the action and cited it as a reason not to include the party in a potential government.
“The incoming government does not have the kind of ties to the PKK – or with the kind of activism that characterizes the PKK’s political wings – that the outgoing government has,” Billström said in comments to reporters on Tuesday.
Billström’s government relies on support from the nationalist Sweden Democrats, who have demanded that the Social Democratic government support increased Kurdish autonomy in Iraq, Syria and Turkey.
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