Ankara cancels Sweden’s defense minister’s visit due to planned protests against Turkey
Turkey said on Saturday it had been called off visit by Sweden’s Minister of Defence over a planned anti-Turkey protest in Stockholm.
– At this point, Swedish Defense Minister Pal Jonson’s visit to Turkey on January 27 has lost its significance and meaning, so we canceled the visit, says Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar.
The Swedish ministerial visit aimed to overcome Ankara’s objections to Sweden’s accession to the NATO military alliance.
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Turkey has been outraged that a right-wing extremist was given permission to demonstrate later on Saturday in front of the Turkish embassy in the Swedish capital.
The Danish-Swedish politician Rasmus Paludan, whose anti-Islamist actions sparked riots across Sweden last year, has expressed his intention to “burn the Koran”, Islam’s holy book, during his protest on Saturday.
Turkey had summoned Sweden’s ambassador on Friday to “condemn this provocative act which is clearly a hate crime – in the strongest terms,” a diplomatic source said.
It is the second time in more than a week that Sweden’s ambassador to Turkey has been called.
Last week he was called to account for a video posted by a Kurdish group in Stockholm depicting President Recep Tayyip Erdogan swings his legs from a rope.
Sweden, along with neighboring Finland, needs Turkey’s consent to join NATO.
Both countries lost decades of military non-alignment last year when they applied to join the Western defense alliance in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Ankara says any progress depends on Swedish action to extradite people it accuses of terrorism or having played a role in the 2016 coup attempt against Erdogan.
Turkey claims that Sweden has not done enough to crack down on Kurdish groups that Ankara sees as “terrorists”.
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