- Phelan Chatterjee
- BBC News
Sweden needs Turkey’s support in order to get approval for its application to join NATO
Sweden’s Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said the protesters, who hung an effigy of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan from a lamppost in the Swedish capital Stockholm, were trying to block their country’s application to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
Sweden still needs Turkey’s approval of its request – approval conditional by Ankara on Stockholm cracking down on groups the Erdogan administration describes as terrorists – including groups that hung an effigy of the Turkish president in the Swedish capital.
A Swedish minister described the incident as “unfortunate”, but Turkey said condemning what happened was not enough.
A pro-Kurdish group called the Swedish Solidarity Committee for Rojava published pictures of a hanged effigy of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan near Stockholm City Hall.
The group said it wanted to evoke the execution of Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini. She also urged Erdogan to “seize the opportunity before him to step down from power before he ends up being hanged upside down in Taksim Square.”
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu held the PKK and the People’s Protection Units – two movements that Ankara considers terrorist groups – responsible for what happened.
Sweden pledged to distance itself from the two movements in order to obtain the support of the Turkish government for its application to join NATO, a support that was delayed for many months.
Ankara described Sweden’s ruling center-right coalition – which is backed by a far-right party – as “strong-willed and easy to work with” compared to the previous regime, but these protests have angered Turkey.
Cavusoglu told local media that Sweden had two options “either turn a blind eye to what happened or bow to it” or fulfill its promises to take action against “terrorist groups”.
Turkey summoned the Swedish ambassador against the backdrop of the Erdogan puppet incident, and canceled a visit that the Swedish parliament speaker was scheduled to pay to Ankara.
The Public Prosecutor’s Office in the Turkish capital opened an investigation into the incident, according to the Anadolu News Agency.
Ulf Kristersson said that what the demonstrators did was an attempt to disrupt NATO’s approval of the membership application submitted by his country to the alliance, which he described as a threat to national security in Sweden.
He added, in an interview with TV4, that it is “extremely dangerous that a mock, imaginary execution of a foreign president who came to power through democratic elections” takes place in a country like Sweden that has a history of political assassinations.
But a member of the Swedish pro-Kurdish group behind the incident told the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter that the demonstrators were trying to support democracy in Sweden, which Kristersson is “undermining”.
He added that Turkey did not issue the reaction that is expected from a democratic country.
