Published: Just now
The Center’s new party leader Muharrem Demirok wants to talk about what it is like to be a Muslim in Sweden and nuance the picture of what a Muslim is.
With a Swedish mother and a Turkish father, he has had dual citizenship. After there was a debate about the appropriateness of this, he has renounced the Turkish.
– I was portrayed as having dual loyalties, I found that offensive, says Muharrem Demirok.
The ground is frozen but the sun is shining and Muharrem Demirok talks about the forest, there are both wolves and lynx here. Demirok has tried to explain to his children that there is a difference between a cultivated forest and a forest, after they were upset by a clear-cutting.
He jokes himself that he sounds like a real centrist.
The party wants to show him from his most rural side, on his homestead by Lake Roxen outside Linköping. Things are going slow for Demirok right now. Only a few weeks into his party leadership and confidence figures are at rock bottom. In some polls, he has the lowest level of trust measured for a party leader.
Demirok is not worried yet. It is still possible to explain the low numbers with the fact that he is relatively unknown to most people, but it is important that things turn around before it starts to eat away at the party.
Down by the lake, he hopes we will see sea eagles. Instead, the silence is broken by the rumble of airplanes.
– In Linköping we love this sound, says Muharrem Demirok.
– Listen! It’s JAS.
No ordinary center leader
Muharrem Demirok has an unusual background for being a center leader. He has no connection to the countryside or sparsely populated areas, but grew up in a vulnerable suburb in the Stockholm area. No one has missed his joke that he also grew up on a farm, Vårby farm.
For many years he has lived with his family in Linköping, but now that the Swedish people are getting to know the new party leader, there are above all two issues that complicate things.
One is that he is not from the countryside, the other is that he is Muslim.
– There are several parts to this that I have thought about over the years. Partly it is: what is a Muslim like? Most are secular Muslims who live a life where religion takes very little place.
– The second part is the polarization I have seen in recent years, where Islamism and Islam are connected.
– I notice how I, who am Swedish and have a strong platform as a politician – just that I call myself a cultural Muslim – what feelings it arouses in many people and what counterstabbing you have to receive.
Above all, it has been noticed in social media. Since he became party leader, he has been singled out as both one and the other, he says.
– It is incredibly draining on a society when it happens that you place certain people in a compartment. We are the projections of right-wing trolls and that is the only thing we are good for. Therefore, it is important for me to highlight the word cultural Muslim.
“Extremely high tolerance”
Demirok’s father is from Turkey and Muharrem Demirok likes to describe himself as a cultural Muslim.
– I am not someone who goes to the mosque particularly often. I have realized that I am not very religious.
– If you are born into a culture, you carry with you traditions that are religiously connected, such as celebrating certain holidays. I bring the cultural elements with me, while the religious becomes less important.
He does not think there is any general racism against Muslims in society today. On the contrary, it can instead turn over in the other direction. However, he thinks that there is increased intolerance in certain groups in society towards people who come from Muslim countries.
– I experience extremely high tolerance. Tolerance that slips into naivety sometimes, that you let some things go too far.
Demirok himself has experience of having reacted to the content of a sermon. After a visit to a mosque some ten years ago, he was upset.
– There was a radical tone in the sermon and it scared me. There was a breeding ground where extreme forces found their way. And you need to be vigilant about that.
– I saw it then in the mosque that was in Vårby farm. But I think Sweden has gotten much better at this.
Deleted the tweet
Being Swedish with a foreign background can be complicated. After a hate storm in the summer of 2021, Demirok expressed some weariness about all the comments about his Turkish roots.
He wrote: “You know what I’m really tired of? Older, privileged and, dare I say, white men. They throw out claims, conjectures and outright falsehoods that they claim are facts, then get offended when you question or even disprove their ‘perfect’ thesis.”
That made matters even worse and Demirok eventually deleted the tweet. But something in him had changed, he describes it as an awakening where he understood that there was an us and a them.
– I’m Swedish and never saw myself as anything else and suddenly I was pulled out and became something else.
– For a large group of people, I am not Swedish, although I cannot see myself as anything other than Swedish. I have experienced that since I became party leader as well.
– I will not let it affect me. I am who I am, but I need to talk about it. If I experience that – who is privileged and has a platform – then there are people who do not have the same conditions who have a completely different mother. How is a Somali mother treated in her everyday life?
– We are tearing Sweden apart. The xenophobic forces are gaining more and more ground.
Beaten by skin skulls
Actually, it is nothing new for Muharrem Demirok to be questioned about his origins. In his line speech as newly elected center leader, Demirok mentioned how as a young man during the 90s he was terrified of the skinheads who gathered around the metro station in Old Town.
As a newly elected Member of Parliament and party leader, he gets off at that very subway station several days a week. The Center Party’s office is just a stone’s throw away.
The nineties are long gone now, but the memory of being chased and beaten by skinheads as a 15-year-old remains deep.
– We were some friends who got off the subway in Hornstull and were chased by skinheads.
– I hid behind a car but they found me. I usually say that I got to feel their iron pipe, before it became modern.
– They got on me and gave me a round, but I think in the end they took pity on me because I was so small. The physicality passed fairly quickly, but the feeling of being left out and being picked on for something someone else thought you were, was palpable.
– I remember a party we were at. Suddenly we noticed the music changed, I think it was Ultima Thule. Then there were a bunch of guys talking in the living room. Then we felt it was time to leave the party.
Ultima Thule is today described as Viking rock, but during the 90s had strong ties to the organization BSS, Bevara Sverige swedisht and white power movement. Today, they are not considered as controversial and something of a household for the Sweden Democrats. For example, it is party leader Jimmie Åkesson’s favorite band and he sometimes performs with them.
– We have different experiences with the same band. Every time I’ve heard Ultima Thule it’s been associated with impending danger.
Stands firm on the issue of SD
The question of the Centre’s relationship with SD has been one of the questions that Muharrem Demirok has been asked on several occasions since he became party leader.
– It is not a question for me or for Annie Lööf. It is a centrist basic value – the equal value of all people, openness and tolerance.
– It’s not about being against another party, it’s about being clear in our basic values. The issue is bigger than SD.
– As long as we are so different, we will never be able to enter into a collaboration where the Center Party and the Sweden Democrats are part of the same government.
After a lousy election result, the Center must now take new steps. Muharrem Demirok has presented the school as his major profile issue.
– The school issue is a natural rural issue, says Demirok and says that it is not possible to just talk about how much the fuel costs when we talk about the countryside.
“Do something with sticks”
A more personal process for Muharrem Demirok is that he renounced his Turkish citizenship.
– I have no emotional ties to citizenship. Whether I have it or not doesn’t matter to me, but I think the debate has become incredibly tricky, that my dual citizenship is problematic.
– I am not alone, neither in the Riksdag nor in the government, about having dual citizenship.
Muharrem Demirok pats the dog Allan’s head tiredly. They don’t leave each other’s side. After the interview, Allan panics when Muharrem disappears around a knot to be photographed and does not calm down until he is in sight again.
Muharrem Demirok says that his new job and his many days in Stockholm have given Allan separation anxiety.
Now the C leader and his press secretary are looking around to see if there is anything else Demirok can do during the photo shoot that feels a bit “rural”.
“Can’t you do something with sticks?” says the press secretary, looking at a pile of branches.