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Bülent Kenes, 53, was having dinner at home with his family.
Then they heard how the president of Turkey called him a terrorist.
– My son and wife were a little shocked. My wife didn’t say anything for several minutes, he says.
At the press conference after the meeting on Tuesday between the Swedish Prime Minister and the President of Turkey regarding Sweden’s NATO application, Recep Tayyip Erdogan suddenly mentioned Bülent Kene’s name. Called him a terrorist and demanded his extradition.
Bülent Kenes tells Aftonbladet about yesterday:
– When my wife called and invited me to dinner, I unfortunately took my iPhone with me and put it on the dining table to listen to the press conference. While we were having the meal, we heard my name mentioned by Erdogan.
– My son and wife were a little shocked, my wife said nothing for several minutes. And my son said “did you expect Erdogan to mention your name, is that why you brought the cell phone to the table?” I said “no, it was a surprise to me”, says Kenes, laughing softly.
– But it wasn’t really that surprising to me. As a critical journalist who continues to raise his voice against despotism and the Islamofascist regime’s human rights violations, you can expect anything from a despot like Erdogan. He could easily organize an assassination squad of jihadists and kill me. It wouldn’t surprise me either.
Kenes believes that Erdogan used his name as “a bid on the negotiating table”:
– I am critical and outspoken, but only a journalist. It is so silly, so stupid, so absurd that Erdogan used my name in the negotiations on Sweden’s NATO membership. It’s so ridiculous, so asymmetrical.
Why did he choose your name, and not someone else’s?
– I don’t know, but I have two theories about it. The first is more optimistic. Erdogan has known me personally for several decades. I was a public person in Turkey, so maybe it was unconscious. Perhaps it was a coincidence that he remembered my name during the press conference and mentioned it.
– The second theory is more pessimistic. Erdogan believes that I and the newspaper Today’s Zaman of which I was editor-in-chief in Turkey betrayed them. During his first two presidential terms, I supported his democratization process. But in 2011 he got almost 50 percent of the vote and changed his mentality. He began collaborating with radical Islamic terrorist organizations in Syria, Iraq, Egypt and Libya. He made Turkey a landing strip for international jihadists from different countries. When I criticized this in English in a newspaper followed by diplomats around the world, the regime thought I was ruining their image.
What do you want to say to Ulf Kristersson after his meeting with Erdogan?
– It was a big mistake to sit down at the negotiating table with a despot. Erdogan is a tyrant in an Islamofascist dictatorship.
Are you afraid of being deported from Sweden now?
– To be honest, I have lost some of my trust in Swedish politicians. But Sweden follows laws and international conventions on human rights. So of course I’m a little worried, but I don’t think that Erdogan will get what he wants from Sweden, says Bülent Kenes.
Since he fled to and received political asylum in Sweden in 2016, he writes about human rights violations in Turkey from his home in the Stockholm area, and is one of the founders behind the Stockholm Center for Freedom. In Turkey, he is accused of terrorism and is threatened with three life sentences.
– The reason is an article I wrote a week before the coup attempt in 2016. They have fabricated crimes and accuse me of being a coup maker, says Kenes.
Aftonbladet has sought Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson (M), but the Moderates have declined to comment on Bülent Kene’s statements.