Anti-Turkey demo in Sweden raises new tensions
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Istanbul (AFP) – Turkey on Saturday canceled a visit by Sweden’s defense minister because of a planned demonstration by a right-wing extremist in Stockholm, sparking a new crisis over NATO talks between the two countries.
Turkey has been outraged by the permission given to Rasmus Paludan, a Swedish-Danish politician whose anti-Islamist actions sparked riots across Sweden last year, to stage a protest in front of his embassy in the Swedish capital.
A day after summoning the Swedish ambassador over the issue, Ankara said it was canceling a visit by Sweden’s defense chief aimed at overcoming Turkey’s objections to Sweden’s bid to join the NATO military alliance.
– 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.
Jonson also confirmed the decision to postpone the visit, which he said was made with Akar at the US military base in Ramstein, Germany, on Friday.
“Our relations with Turkey are very important to Sweden, and we look forward to continuing the dialogue on common security and defense issues at a later date,” he tweeted.
Paludan has expressed his intention to “burn the Koran”, Islam’s holy book, during his protest on Saturday.
Last April, Paludan’s announcement of a Koran “tour” for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan sparked riots across Sweden.
The protest continued as planned later on Saturday under heavy police protection, according to an AFP journalist.
Around 100 people – including a large number of journalists – gathered near the Turkish embassy in Stockholm.
Paludan set fire to the holy book with a lighter after a long diatribe of almost an hour in which he attacked Islam and immigration in Sweden.
“If you don’t think there should be free speech, you need to live somewhere else,” he said.
A small pro-Turkish demonstration also took place on the other side of the embassy.
Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu sparked outrage at the failure of Swedish authorities to ban the protest.
“It’s a racist act, it’s not about free speech,” he said.
“Modern Barbarism”
Turkish presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin said on Saturday that allowing the protest despite Ankara’s repeated warnings “encourages hate crimes and Islamophobia”.
“The attack on sacred values is not freedom but modern barbarism,” he tweeted.
The government’s right-wing allies were more furious.
“Sweden’s NATO membership will not be approved by parliament,” said Devlet Bahceli, leader of the MHP party.
Turkey had on Friday summoned Sweden’s ambassador to “condemn this provocative act which is clearly a hate crime – in the strongest terms”, a diplomatic source said.
State Department officials told the ambassador that Sweden’s permission for the protest under the pretext of defending democratic values was “unacceptable,” the source added.
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 that depicted President Recep Tayyip Erdogan swinging his legs from a rope.
A tweet from the group, the Rojava Committee of Sweden, compared Erdogan to Italy’s fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, who was hanged upside down after his execution in the final days of World War II.
A pro-Kurdish meeting called by, among others, Sweden’s Rojava Committee took place on Saturday and drew several hundred people.
Sweden, together 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”.
© 2023 AFP