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Sweden’s center-right government will satisfy all the requirements of a deal with Turkey to join NATO and concentrate its foreign relations on its immediate community while abandoning the “feminist foreign policy” of the previous administration, the country’s most sensible diplomat said on Monday.
Foreign Minister Tobias Billström said the new government stores Turkey’s considerations about the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, which is a terrorist organization in Turkey, Europe and the United States.
“There will be no nonsense about the Swedish government component as far as the PKK is concerned,” Billstrom told The Associated Press in an interview. territory. “
Turkey has blocked the historic attempt through Sweden and Finland to join NATO, fearing that either country, specifically Sweden, will have a haven for PKK members and affiliated groups.
As part of a memorandum of understanding signed through Sweden’s previous leftist government at a NATO summit in June, Sweden and Finland pledged not to accept Kurdish teams in Syria that Turkey says are affiliated with the PKK and to lift arms embargoes imposed on Turkey. after its incursioninto northern Syria in 2019. They also agreed to “deal with pending requests for deportation or extradition of suspected terrorists,” which was made more confusing by Turkey’s broad definition of terrorism, where anti-terrorism legislation has been used to crack down on President Recep Tayyip’s belligerent parties. Erdogan.
“Everything that is written in the trilateral memorandum, and that has been agreed through the 3 parties, will have to be fulfilled, it will have to be finished through the 3 parts,” Billström said, adding that “everything will also have to be done. “legally safe.
The PKK has been waging armed opposition to the Turkish state since 1984 and since then the clash has resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of people.
Paul Levin, director of Stockholm University’s Institute of Turkish Studies, said the new government may have merit over the previous Social Democratic government in its relations with Turkey, as it has the same ties to the Kurdish diaspora in Sweden. However, the independence of the government and courts in Sweden “sets limits to what is possible, just like foreign laws,” Levin said.
Hungary and Turkey are the NATO countries that have yet to ratify the club from Sweden and Finland, historically non-aligned countries that rushed to apply for the club after Russia invaded Ukraine in February.
Like most European countries, Sweden obviously sided with Ukraine in the war, offering its armed forces anti-tank weapons, attack rifles and anti-ship missiles. Ukraine has also asked Sweden to supply the Archer artillery formula and the RBS-70 man. Portable air defense formula. Billström said the new government had yet made a resolution on those demands.
“We are in a position to try to help the Ukrainian government as much as possible in its heroic fight against Russian forces,” Billström said. “We’ll see when we’ve done the right tests on those issues. “
Billström, a former immigration minister, is a senior member of the conservative Moderate Party, which last week formed a coalition government with the center-right liberals and Christian Democrats. He developed a non-unusual political platform that includes serious immigration restrictions and crackdowns on organized crime.
Billström also promised a replacement in Sweden’s foreign relations, with a focus on northern Europe. Traditionally, Sweden has sought to assign itself around the world as a “humanitarian superpower” with relative benefits for emerging countries around the world and a strong commitment to the United Nations.
“That doesn’t mean we probably don’t care about the rest of the world, far from it,” Billström said, noting that he had given a speech earlier Monday at the United Nations Day birthday party, which marks the anniversary of the 1945 UN Charter.
“But in terms of those recalibrations that we aspire to, it’s true that there will be a change of direction,” he said. “And the Nordic countries, the Baltic countries and the European Union will be the three legs on which to base this recalibration. “
In addition, the new government will abandon the “feminist foreign policy” implemented through the previous government in 2014. Since then, the label has been used in all countries, adding Canada, France, Spain and Germany.
“We believe that equal rights between men and women are important, but to use the word ‘feminist foreign policy’ means to distract attention from what is really important. You put more emphasis on the label than the actual content,” Billström said.
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