“Sweden is seen as the PKK’s largest support in Europe”

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Facts: PKK, PYD and YPG

The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) was founded in 1978 as a Marxist party.

The movement’s target was a Kurdish state in southeastern Turkey as well as neighboring parts of neighboring countries.

In 1984, the PKK took up arms against the Turkish state in the struggle for independence.

The PKK is branded terrorist by Turkey, the EU and the USA.

In 2015, an estimated 45,000 people were killed during 30 years of fighting between the Turkish military and the PKK.

In Syria, opposition to the terrorist movement IS has largely consisted of Syria’s Democratic Forces (SDF), which is dominated by the Kurdish YPG militia.

Sweden, the USA and the EU do not classify the YPG as terrorists, but Turkey equates the YPG with the PKK. Both government representatives and state-controlled media refer to them as one and the same entity.

The YPG is the armed branch of the PYD, which is the largest political party among Syrian Kurds.

The many tours around Sweden’s NATO application do not only create headlines in Sweden. Swedish politics has also received a lot of attention in the Turkish media.

It tells Huseyin Bagci, head of Turkey’s Foreign Policy Institute (DPE) and one of the country’s most influential voices in international relations.

– My impression is that the majority of Turks are against Swedish NATO membership. In any case, they believe that the government is doing the right thing in blocking the application right now, he tells TT.

Tone down criticism

Bagci cites an example in Turkish domestic policy: A year ago, the government called on TV channels with links to the Muslim Brotherhood to tone down its critical remarks against Egyptian President Abd al-Fattah al-Sisi. That after the relations between Ankara and Cairo improved.

– It is a recurring discussion that if Turkey is to exclude groups due to politics, then Sweden can do the same, he says.

At the same time, he emphasizes that Sweden is generally a respected country in Turkey, which is seen as a role model in terms of, among other things, democracy and human rights.

Professor Huseyin Bagci. Stock Photography.Grange exchange of words

Sweden’s Foreign Minister Ann Linde (S) has a very bad reputation in Turkey, Bagci continues. One and a half years ago, she ended up in a heated exchange with her Turkish counterpart Mevlüt Cavusoglu, after saying that she was calling on Turkey to withdraw from Syria.

To “use the word urge in that way in diplomacy is condescending,” Cavusoglu said – to which Linde replied: “I just hope that everyone in Turkey has the opportunity to express their views as openly as the Foreign Minister does.”

According to Bagci, this is something that is still being talked about in Turkey and that has disturbed the country’s president Recep Tayyip Erdogan personally.

– Although it is not necessarily true, it is rooted in many in Turkish public opinion that Sweden is the PKK’s largest support in Europe. That impression began with Ann Linde’s statement, and has been strengthened in recent weeks, says Bagci.

May take several months

The same picture is reproduced in the major Turkish newspapers, according to the professor. There, a picture is spread that Sweden consistently defends and promotes the PKK and the YPG.

Turkey has blocked both Sweden’s and Finland’s NATO applications. But according to Huseyin Bagci, it is above all Sweden that is the big main concern for Ankara, where Finland is seen as less problematic and more cooperative.

As for the future, Bagci sees the positions as locked in – especially after the government announced that the agreement with the political savage Amineh Kakabaveh on a deepened support for the Syrian-Kurdish self-government PYD is firm.

His forecast is that Sweden will eventually be admitted into the alliance, but that it will take several months. Bagci does not see it as likely that the countries have agreed when NATO holds a summit in Madrid at the end of June.

– The more Stockholm insists on its cause, Ankara will say no. It will probably take after Sweden’s election this autumn for this to be resolved, he says.

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