Turkish President RecThe leaders of Turkey, Finland Sweden and NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg meet at the NATO summit in Madrid. Photo by Anadolu Images.

Sweden Must Face Its Commitments Instead of Instrumentalizing Anti-Turkish and Anti-Muslim Sentiments

Sweden is unlikely to make any move that could play into President Erdogan’s hand ahead of Turkey’s upcoming elections.

Sweden has paid a heavy price in domestic politics for supporting terrorism for decades. Over the years, the country has become a safe haven for the PKK terrorist organization and other radical left-wing organizations targeting Turkey. In recent decades, the organizations have carried out, among others, their financial, political, and cultural activities on Swedish territory. By providing them legal and political protection, Sweden has helped such organizations stay in touch with the world. In this sense, their presence in Sweden has served as a protective shield for their activities elsewhere and granted them legitimacy.

Various groups in Sweden, which are directly or indirectly linked to the PKK terrorist entity, employ concepts respected by Western publics in order to enjoy the comfort of those countries’ diplomatic and political frameworks and engage in illegal activities. In this manner, they receive legal and political support to continue to exist within the local systems. In turn, the organizations and networks which have organized themselves in the guise of civil society on Swedish soil by utilizing Western-friendly concepts, and the immigrant ghettoes, which largely consist of political asylum seekers, have become a fertile ground for radicalization and all kinds of extremism.

In addition to the PKK, PYD, MLKP, and DHKP-C, groups like Daesh and the Al-Nusra Front have recruited dozens of members from the ghettoes. Although local intelligence services monitor such radical ghettoes very closely, the activities of such groups have been largely ignored as long as they did not commit any acts on European soil…

Read more on Politics Today: Sweden Must Face Its Commitments Instead of Instrumentalizing Anti-Turkish and Anti-Muslim Sentiments

[Politics Today, February 2, 2023]

In this article