Turkish demands for Kurdish refugees threaten Sweden’s NATO membership
When Russian troops stormed into Ukraine last February, the reverberations extended far beyond Ukraine’s borders. In my home country Sweden, the previously self-evident truth that we must always remain fundamentally neutral was shaken. Sweden officially abandoned neutrality and applied to join NATO in May along with Finland, after being sure of a quick and easy application process. And then everything went horribly wrong.
Turkey has issued a number of demands in exchange for a yes, and it is continuing the process. Sweden is home to one Kurdish minority numbering 100,000, mostly made up of refugees fleeing Turkish persecution. Several Kurdish politicians hold prominent positions in the Swedish parliament. And Sweden has been largely friendly to the Kurdish cause in the Middle East, although its support has not been nearly as significant as Turkey claims.
In fact, Sweden classified the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) as one terrorist group 1984 – the first country to do so after Turkey – and the PKK was considered prime suspect when then Prime Minister Olof Palme was murdered two years later (although no PKK member was ultimately charged). The Kurdish People’s Defense Units (YPG), crucial to defeating ISIS, have not been classified as a terrorist group by Sweden or for that matter the US, but Sweden has never helped the YPG or the Kurdish Democratic Union (PYD).
What Sweden has done, however, is grant asylum to a number of Turkish (mainly Kurdish) political dissidents. Other countries have been more hesitant to pick a fight with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan by granting asylum to his critics. Sweden, which never anticipated joining NATO and thus needed Turkey’s approval, has taken a different approach. Turkey claimed it first 73 individuals being deported to Turkey to face trial and all but definite imprisonment, but this list has now grown 130 names after an anti-Erdoğan protest in Stockholm last week with a picture of Erdoğan, hung upside down mimic as was Italian dictator Benito Mussolini executed. The Kurdish group behind the action said that they wanted remind Erdoğan about the fate that often befalls dictators, telling him that “Take the opportunity to step down, and you will not end up in Taksim square.” The Swedish government condemned the protest, but at the same time emphasized that nothing the protesters did was illegal.