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November 13, 2022
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has turned Sweden around by naming those he needs Swedish judges to hand over in exchange for NATO membership.
“It is for Sweden to extradite wanted terrorists through Turkey, adding senior FETÖ official Bülent Keneş,” Erdoğan said in Ankara on Tuesday (November 8), after meeting for the first time with Sweden’s new prime minister.
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Keneş is an exiled Turkish editor-in-chief, who ran the Zaman newspaper, and in the past was jailed for tweets deemed insulting to Erdoğan.
FETÖ is Turkey’s for supporters of Fethullah Gülen, a US-based Muslim leader. The U. S. government blames Erdoğan for staging a failed coup in 2016.
Tuesday’s summit in Ankara was aimed at helping unlock NATO’s northern expansion.
Sweden and Finland implemented for the club in May themselves from Russian aggression, however, they are still waiting for Turkey and Hungary to ratify the club.
Turkey had in the past asked Sweden to extradite 73 terror suspects, mostly from Kurdish separatist groups such as the PKK and YPG.
“The PKK/PYD/YPG, FETÖ and DHKP-C terrorist organizations must be prevented from exploiting the Swedish democratic environment,” Erdoğan also said on Tuesday.
Sweden has extradited a single Turkish citizen on Aug. 31, according to a Swedish letter to Turkey leaked to Reuters news firm last month.
“Sweden is committed to treating and very well (. . . ) pending extradition requests of suspected terrorists,” in accordance with Swedish and European law, the letter added.
Erdoğan is used to receiving his from judges in Turkey, who have jailed thousands of his belligerents since the coup.
But his designation of other people like Keneş as political red lines at summits risks being seen as interference in Sweden’s judicial independence.
Turkish nationalist media also tracked Keneş and other exiles in Sweden, publishing their addresses and photos of their homes and cars, or photos of them walking around Stockholm.
“I’m stupid. I’m part of the coup,” Keneş told Swedish news firm SVT Nyheter two weeks ago.
“I am worried that negotiations between the newly formed Swedish government and Erdogan’s Islamofascist and despotic regime will make the extradition decision,” Keneş added, as he waited for his hearing.
Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson promised to play ball at Tuesday’s friendly news conference with Erdoğan, but did not comment on the names.
“I need to assure all Turks that Sweden will honor all obligations to Turkey in combating the terrorist risk before becoming a NATO member and as a long-term ally,” Kristersson said.
His foreign minister, Tobias Billström, also told reporters last weekend that Sweden would remain “distanced” from two Kurdish teams in Syria, the YPG and the PYD, because too close it was “damaging our relationship with Turkey. “
Sweden’s right wing came to force in the September elections.
The previous Social Democratic government criticized Kristersson’s NATO process, calling it “worrying and consenting” toward Turkey.
A YPG spokesperson also told Swedish media over the weekend that it would isolate Swedish foreign fighters from its detention camps in northern Syria, in a new backlash.
“Why are we dealing with Swedish terrorists?” the YPG spokesperson told Sweden’s TV4 “Why do we do this when you are moving away from an organization that fights terrorism and will pay dearly?”Asked.
A PYD spokeswoman in Syria told Reuters: “We believe that the Swedish government’s submission to Turkish blackmail contradicts the principles and morals of Swedish society and the humanitarian attitudes that characterize Sweden. “
The Turkish president will have to play a strongman role at the European level and satisfy nationalist sentiment by attacking the Kurds in the run-up to next June’s elections, an EU diplomat has told EUobserver in the past.
But Erdoğan’s wishes aside, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán also leaves Sweden and Finland in limbo over NATO ratification.
Orbán’s Fidesz on Tuesday rejected an opposition move to put the factor to a vote this week.
If this is done until Dec. 6, it will be postponed until February 2023 because of the parliamentary agenda, Ágnes Vadai, a deputy from Hungary’s opposition Democratic Coalition party, told the website.
There were several reasons for Orbán’s delay, he said.
On the one hand, Hungarians lately are more affected by double-digit inflation than by NATO enlargement, he noted.
But Orbán is also suspected of political games with the NATO process.
“I think [Fidesz] blackmails Finland and Sweden for EU money,” Vadai said, referring to Hungary’s standoff with the European Commission, which withheld Budapest’s budget over Orbán’s abuse of the rule of law.
They also have “an agreement with Ankara to rush,” Vadai said, and Erdoğan and Orbán noted that they gained influence by acting together.
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