The Green Party is worried that the government will give in to Kurds and arms exports in talks with Turkey about Swedish NATO membership.
– I have requested that Foreign Minister Ann Linde come to the Foreign Affairs Committee to report on how Sweden acts, says Maria Ferm, foreign policy spokesperson for the MP.
Ferm mentions his demand, which Dagens Nyheter was the first to report on, after a defense policy debate at the Swedish National Defense College arranged by the student union. The question of the Turkish demands, or the Turkish opposition to NATO membership for Sweden and Finland, arose.
Maria Ferm criticizes the government – and some of the other parliamentary parties that participated in the debate – for being flat and vague in relation to the demands that Turkey makes to change the line.
– It resolves itself, there are talks going on, they say. But it is not clear that we will not change our policy for Turkish pressure to change arms exports or deport certain people from Sweden, says Ferm.
M is low
The Moderates’ foreign policy spokesman Hans Wallmark is restrained.
– For the Moderates, membership is something we strive for and therefore there is no reason for us to bother about it or in any way make it difficult for the government. We do not know what they are negotiating about, says Wallmark.
TT: How then to bother with it?
– By commenting on something that may or may not be the subject of media discussion.
Hans Wallmark is usually one of the first in the Riksdag to request more information from the government on sensitive foreign affairs. But not now. And he has not received any qualified information either.
– But I hope to be able to get it in the near future. Right now I do not know more about our (read: government) talks in Ankara.
A sensitive time
The Center Party’s foreign policy spokesperson Kerstin Lundgren does not want to say much. She wants “does not want to feed the trolls” in the tense situation that has arisen and where there is uncertainty about what the Turks really want.
The Sweden Democrats’ representative Markus Wiechel says that this is a sensitive time.
– Turkey is trying to take advantage of the situation and get benefits, they have done that before, he says.
But Wiechel emphasizes that there can be no question of handing over or deporting named Kurds in Sweden to Turkey because the country’s president Erdogan demands it.
– There is no party in Sweden’s Riksdag that would agree to expel people for political reasons to promote the interests of an Islamist, he says.
And Wiechel does not share Turkey’s view of the Kurdish PYD / YPG in Syria as an offshoot of the terror-listed PKK.