Sweden should not expect Turkey’s support in its bid to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Monday, days after a copy of the Quran was burned in a protest in Stockholm.
Sweden, along with Finland, applied to join NATO after Russia invaded Ukraine last February, but the countries need all 30 NATO members to ratify their requests to join. Hungary said it would approve Sweden’s bid early this year. Turkey has been less willing.
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“Sweden should not expect support from us for NATO,” Erdogan said. “It is clear that those who caused such a disgrace in front of our country’s embassy can no longer expect any benevolence from us regarding their application.”
The Turkish president’s statements came after Rasmus Paludan, a far-right politician from a Danish party, burned a Quran in front of the Turkish Embassy this past weekend. And earlier this month, Kurdish protesters in Sweden hung an effigy of Erdogan.
The most recent protest was given prior approval by Swedish authorities, but the burning itself was not sanctioned, according to BBC News. Many denounced the Quran burning as a hate crime, while others maintained it was an act of free speech.
Turkey, a majority Muslim country, condemned the Swedish government’s decision to allow the protest as “completely unacceptable,” the U.K.-based outlet reported. “We condemn in the strongest possible terms the vile attack on our holy book. … Permitting this anti-Islam act, which targets Muslims and insults our sacred values, under the guise of freedom of expression, is completely unacceptable,” the Turkish Foreign Ministry said, per CNN.
A separate protest took place in the city supporting Kurds and against Sweden’s bid to join NATO, and a group of pro-Turkish demonstrators also held a rally outside the Turkish Embassy, both of which had police permits, the news outlet added.
Swedish Foreign Minister Tobias Billstrom said that Islamophobic actions such as the one carried out by Paludan are appalling.
“Sweden has a far-reaching freedom of expression, but it does not imply that the Swedish government, or myself, support the opinions expressed,” Billstrom said.
Much of Turkey’s apprehension, if not outright rejection, toward the Scandinavian country’s NATO bid centers on Sweden’s embrace of Turkish Kurds. Erdogan complains that the Kurdish diaspora in Sweden is replete with links to the PKK, a Kurdish militant group designated as a foreign terrorist organization. Erdogan also last fall protested Sweden and Finland’s refusal to sell weapons to Turkey.
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“As long as the terrorist organizations are demonstrating on the streets of Sweden, and as long as the terrorists are inside the Swedish parliament, there is not going to be a positive approach from Turkey towards Sweden,” Erdogan said last October.
Erdogan has also drawn a distinction between Sweden and Finland, saying that “Finland is not a country where terrorists are roaming freely.” Finnish and Swedish officials want to join NATO simultaneously — a joint maneuver that reflects the traditional unity of their strategic cultures.
