พวกฝ่ายขวาคงพอใจกับข้อเรียกร้องของตุรกี

 Erdogan's demands should have clouded the right's joy

PUBLISHED: TODAY 08.01

This is a commentary text. Analysis and positions are the writer's.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Photo: Markus Schreiber / AP

COLUMNISTS

Sweden would dance into a prawn sandwich in NATO, assured all victorious right-wing parties and liberals. Like they insisted that Turkey was not a problem and that Sweden's independent foreign policy would in no way be affected by our new alliance.

Although the latter assurance, they must have pronounced with their fingers crossed behind their backs. Too long before the Russian dictator Putin provided the NATO supporters with a heavy, if not the heaviest argument for Swedish NATO membership, they wanted us under US foreign policy dominance. The United States is the boss of NATO. When Expressen's leadership now boasts that it has been for Swedish submission to NATO since 1995, one should probably consider that it was long before the political madness broke out in the Kremlin, a time when even Russia's entry into both the EU and NATO was actually discussed. . The main thing then and until February 24 this year was for NATO supporters to get rid of the independent Swedish foreign policy. But with the war of aggression against Ukraine, Putin proved that, against all rhyme, reason, military and political logic, he could start wars of conquest against neighbors who were not NATO members. There he finally gave the Swedish, and Finnish, NATO supporters a both presentable and decisive argument.

When Expressen's leadership side cheered on the victory over the Swedish formal membership application to NATO, they happened in their euphoric excitement to say to themselves in the hurtful statement that now “they are doing away with the last remnants of Olof Palme's legacy. A historic epoch ends… all that the left mourns this spring is a source of unbridled joy for many of us others ”.

The blood-stained Turkish ruler Erdogan should have clouded this liberal joy after all. Because he so quickly and convincingly proved that all claims about continued independent Swedish foreign policy were at best "naive", to use politics' latest favorite cliché, or at worst deliberately false.

The dictator Erdogan thus has a veto right when it comes to letting Sweden into the NATO community. He also has the right to make demands on a candidate new country. Like that Sweden should lift its arms embargo against Turkey, so that it can more effectively continue the murder of its own population. That is a logical requirement. Why would a member of a military alliance refuse to sell weapons to other allies?

Erdogan's other demands on Sweden are even sweatier to deal with. He demands that such opposition journalists who should be tortured and imprisoned, but who unfortunately received political asylum in Sweden must be extradited, because they are terrorists. Erdogan considers all opposition journalists to be terrorists. He demands that Sweden cease to support the Kurdish freedom movement in northeastern Syria, those who, in alliance with the United States, defeated the reign of terror IS. Erdogan also considers all Kurds terrorists. He thus demands a tougher grip on all Kurds in Sweden, because they are terrorists.

This is where the bloody irony finally arises that Erdogan, of all people, describes Sweden as democratically unreliable. Of course, there is also a reason to deny NATO membership. Because Sweden supports terrorists.

In the shadow of the media, Swedish Säpo has in the past year, as far as can be understood in cooperation with the Turkish security service, called in and stamped 38 Kurds in Sweden and demanded their deportation. Of course with "secret evidence" as alleged evidence. So that none of the accused can defend themselves. Säpo, as the only Swedish institution, had to enjoy Erdogan's confidence, as they had apparently understood the meaning of a future Swedish NATO membership. Säpo's foresighted work with Kurds is strongly reminiscent of how the Swedish navy already many years ago optimistically switched to NATO's uglier uniforms and rank designations.

The scandal with Säpo's intensified Kurdish hunting hardly appears as a topic in the liberal press. It is only the left-wing newspaper ETC that diligently touches on the strange fact that Sweden is systematically capturing suitable deportation objects to Erdogan.

So that shrimp sandwich on which Sweden would sail into NATO's safe and apolitical port thus became nothing. Instead, it ended with some equally concrete and unpleasant political choices. How many Turkish journalists who have been granted political asylum in Sweden do we need to hand over to the Turkish torture justice? To what extent should we resume arms exports to Turkey? How many of the Kurds that Säpo so helpfully stamped terrorist with his secret evidence do we need to sell? To what extent does Sweden's development aid policy need to be corrected?

As long as "the last remnants of Olof Palme's legacy" still existed, ie at the time Sweden could decide on its foreign policy, these questions would never have had to be asked. But "everything that the left mourns this spring is a source of unbridled joy for many of us others," wrote Expressen.

By the way, I think that…

… Ebba Busch obviously demanded dead rioters when she wanted the police to shoot 100 copies. As an experienced deer shooter, she must know that one hundred killed immigrants with the police's hole tip ammunition would result in 20-30 deaths.

Organ Morgan Johansson's constant assertion that he trusts Säpo's secret evidence is unworthy of a Minister of Justice in a democratic country. But he would not seem the least bit strange in Turkey or Saudi Arabia.

Of:

Jan Guillou