Turkey cancels Swedish minister’s visit due to protest permit – DW – 2023-01-21
Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar announced on Saturday that a planned visit by Swedish Defense Minister Pal Jonson to Turkey had been cancelled.
The visit, aimed at overcoming Turkey’s objections to Sweden’s bid to join the NATO military alliance, had been planned for next week.
“At this point, Swedish Defense Minister Pal Jonson’s visit to Turkey on January 27 has become pointless. So we canceled the visit,” Akar said.
Later on Saturday, Jonson tweeted that he and Akar had agreed to postpone the visit on Friday during a summit at Ramstein Air Base in Germany.
“Yesterday I met with my Turkish counterpart Hulusi Akar at the US military base in Ramstein, Germany. We then decided to postpone the planned meeting in Ankara until later,” Jonson said.
“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 added.
Why else was the visit cancelled?
Akar cited a far-right protest in Stockholm – where a copy of the Koran, the Muslim holy book, was burned – as the reason for the cancellation.
Swedish authorities gave Rasmus Paludan, a Swedish-Danish politician whose anti-Islamist actions sparked riots across Sweden last year, permission to stage the protest near the Turkish embassy in Stockholm.
“Not making a move or reacting to these is unacceptable [protests]. The necessary things that needed to be done, action should have been taken,” Akar said.
Sweden’s foreign minister Tobias Billström called Islamophobic provocations terrible.
“Sweden has far-reaching freedom of speech, but that does not mean that the Swedish government, or myself, support the views expressed,” Billström said on Twitter.
Turkey’s foreign ministry said the decision to allow the protest to continue was “unacceptable”.
“We condemn in the strongest possible way the heinous attack on our holy book,” the Turkish Foreign Ministry said on Saturday. “Allowing this anti-Islam act, which targets Muslims and insults our sacred values, under the guise of freedom of expression is completely unacceptable.”
Ahead of the protest on Saturday, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu called on Swedish authorities to revoke the permit for it.
Turkish presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin also condemned the protest, calling it a “clear hate crime”.
“Allowing this act despite all our warnings encourages hate crimes and Islamophobia,” he said. “The attack on sacred values is not freedom but modern barbarism.”
On Friday, Turkey summoned Sweden’s ambassador over the Swedish authorities’ permission for the protest.
Meanwhile, pro-Kurdish and pro-Turkish groups in Sweden planned demonstrations in Stockholm over the weekend.
Ankara had summoned the ambassador earlier this month over a video circulating on social media showing an image of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan swinging from a rope at a Kurdish protest in the Swedish capital.
Turkey is waiting to accept NATO’s bid
Ending decades of military non-alignment, Sweden is seeking to join the NATO alliance in light of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Accession is only possible with the approval of all current members of the alliance, including Turkey.
Turkey has demanded that Sweden and neighboring Finland crack down on Kurdish militants in exchange for support for the countries’ membership application. Helsinki and Stockholm have since signed a memorandum with Ankara to secure its support for the two Nordic countries’ accession to NATO.
Turkey says progress depends on Swedish action to extradite people it accuses of “terrorism” or of links to a 2016 coup attempt.
sdi/fb (AP, Reuters, AFP)