Swedish police said they would allow a right-wing activist to burn a copy of the Koran at the Turkish Embassy in Stockholm. The new diplomatic row comes as Stockholm awaits Ankara’s blessing to join NATO.
Police in Sweden have said they will allow the leader of a hard-right political party to burn a copy of the Koran near the Turkish Embassy in Stockholm, reportedly prompting Ankara to summon its Swedish envoy over the “provocative act.”
Anti-Islam activist Rasmus Paludan, a Danish-Swedish lawyer who heads up the right-wing ‘Stram Kurs’ (Hard Line) party in Denmark, will be permitted to destroy the Islamic holy book during a rally planned outside Türkiye’s Embassy on January 21.
“Sweden’s constitutional laws give strong protection and you need to judge that the value of being able to demonstrate and freedom of expression is extremely important,” said Swedish police spokesman Ola Osterling.
According to unnamed diplomatic sources cited by Türkiye’s state-run Anadolu news agency, the Swedish ambassador to Türkiye, Staffan Herrstrom, was summoned by the Foreign Ministry to discuss the book-burning on Friday, with the sources saying the planned stunt is “clearly a hate crime.”
“Sweden’s attitude is unacceptable. We expect the act not to be allowed, and that insults to sacred values cannot be defended under the guise of ‘democratic rights,’” they added.
The rally on Saturday will follow another protest in Stockholm earlier this week, which saw Kurdish activists string up a life-size dummy meant to depict Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Ankara responded harshly to the incident, branding Sweden a “propaganda center” for terrorism, echoing previous allegations that the government supports armed Kurdish groups also active in Türkiye.
The spat over the planned book-burning comes as both Sweden and Finland seek Turkish approval to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which requires unanimous consent from all members before inviting new states to join. Though it appeared some progress was made on the issue last year after the two Nordic states applied for membership, negotiations have since stalled as Ankara insists the NATO hopefuls take further steps against groups and individuals it regards as terrorists. Read More
Türkiye labels NATO applicant a ‘terrorist propaganda center’
The refusal to prosecute means that “a terrorist group can take any action it wants in Sweden; it can threaten the heads of states of friendly countries,” the spokesman for Erdogan’s AK Party, Omer Celik, told reporters on Monday.
What the Kurdish protesters did “has nothing to do with free speech,” he insisted, adding that Sweden has become the “propaganda center of these terrorists.”
“The silence of those who claim to champion democracy, pluralism, and freedom in the face of this vile terrorist act means nothing but supporting terrorism,” Celik asserted, as cited by Anadolu news agency.
Ankara is currently stalling on the bids by Sweden and Finland to join NATO, accusing them of harboring “terrorists” from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and other associated groups – which have been banned by the Turkish authorities – and demanding the lifting of an arms embargo on Türkiye.
Sweden has since lifted the ban on the sale of weapons, amended its constitution to make clamping down on terrorism easier, and carried out several extraditions of Kurdish suspects to Türkiye.
But Ankara insisted that those steps were not enough. On Sunday, Erdogan told Sweden and Finland that “first of all, you have to hand more than 100, around 130 of these terrorists to us.” If this isn’t done it would be impossible to ratify the two nations’ NATO applications in the Turkish parliament, he warned.