A year has passed since Turkey decided to drop its veto against Sweden and Finland joining NATO and the three countries signed a memorandum of understanding at a NATO summit in Madrid but Sweden still faces hurdles ahead of a summit in Vilnius in July.
While Finland became NATO’s newest member in April this year, after all 30 national parliaments in the member states had ratified it membership, neither Hungary nor Turkey have yet approved Sweden’s NATO application for reasons linked to their domestic politics. Hungary has indicated that it will do it but Turkey is still holding its cards.
In Sweden’s case, recent events such as the burning of the holy Quran, which according to Swedish court decisions is an expression of freedom of expression and assembly and cannot be banned by the police even for the sake of public order, angered Turkey and the Muslim world.
The situation has not become clearer since the presidential elections in Turkey in May which resulted in a victory for the incumbent president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. He swore the presidential oath in an inauguration ceremony in Ankara last Saturday. Sweden was represented at the ceremony by its former prime minister and foreign minister Carl Bildt who was tasked to strengthen the relations with Turkey.
Bildt tweeted that he was impressed by the ceremony but did not meet Erdogan personally. The person who tried to persuade Erdogan to accept Sweden as a NATO member was NATO’s Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg who also had come for the inauguration ceremony. According to a press release from NATO, the two leaders discussed Sweden’s bid for NATO membership.
Stoltenberg noted that Stockholm has taken significant, concrete steps to meet Turkey’s concerns, including amending the Swedish constitution, ending its arms embargo, and stepping up counter-terrorism cooperation. He further noted that important new anti-terrorism legislation has come into force in the past few days. According to Stoltenberg, Sweden has fulfilled all its obligations.
Referring to pro-Kurdish demonstrations in Stockholm against Sweden joining NATO, he said that, “we should not allow them to succeed”. Membership will not only make Sweden safer but also make NATO and Turkey stronger, he concluded.
Stoltenberg was referring to the latest amendments to the Swedish anti-terrorism law which entered into force on 1 June. Still, it seems that Turkey is not satisfied. Sweden’s foreign minister Tobias Billström was reportedly told on Thursday by his new Turkish counterpart that Turkey continues to demand more “concrete steps” by Sweden.
As was previously reported, Turkey demanded that Sweden should extradite alleged terrorists linked to organisations that are outlawed in Turkey. One of them, Kurdistan Workers´ Party (PKK), is classified as a terrorist organisation by the EU but not the Gulenist movement (FETÖ) and the People’s Protection Units (YPG), the armed wing of the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) in north-east Syria.
According to the memorandum signed in Madrid, Finland and Sweden will address “Turkey’s pending deportation or extradition requests of terror suspects expeditiously and thoroughly”, taking in account information and evidence from Turkey, “in accordance with the European Convention on Extradition.” The memorandum also deals with implementing anti-terrorism legislation in the three countries
A Swedish court decided recently to give the go-ahead for the extradition to Turkey of an alleged supporter of PKK who has been living in Sweden for years but ultimately it will be up to the Swedish government to decide whether to extradite the person.
Changes in anti-terrorism legislation
The anti-terrorism legislation in place in Turkey has been criticized by EU in the stalled accession negotiations as a tool to limit freedom of expression and imprison political opponents. According to the Commission’s country reports, Turkey needs to align it anti-terrorism legislation with European standards, case-law and the recommendations of the Venice Commission.
The same can be said about Sweden and several other EU member states as regards their transposition into national law of an EU directive from 2017 on combatting terrorism. The Commission has launched infringement procedures against Sweden and other member states for failing to correctly transposing elements of the directive. The procedures are still on-going.
The Commission declines to disclose the content of the notifications sent to the member states. However, in Sweden’s case the truth of the matter can be learned from the review by the Law Council (Lagrådet) of the amendments of the anti-terrorism legislation. The Council found that the amendments went too far in view of the needs and should not be enacted.
If this legislation would have been in force in the past, the Council wrote, support to freedom movements in different parts of the world that also carried out terrorist attacks would have been a crime. It is of course not the intention to criminalize for example journalistic activity but as the text is vague it will be up to the courts to test the limits of freedom of expression.
The rejection of the proposed amendments by the Law Council did not prevent the Swedish coalition government from going ahead with the legislation. It was adopted by a large majority in the parliament (Riksdagen), supported by the main opposition party, the Social Democratic Party, which had initiated Sweden’s bid for NATO membership.
The amended anti-terrorism law states that anyone who participates in the activities of a terrorist organisation in a way that is intended to promote, strengthen or support the organisation is convicted of participation in the organisation. The penalty is imprisonment for a maximum of four years but can be more if the crime is serious.
Financial support for a terrorist organisation, public incitement to terrorism, recruitment for terrorism, training for terrorism, and travels to another country with the intention of committing or otherwise participating in terrorist acts are now crimes. The new Swedish law opens up for the extradition of a Swedish citizen or foreign citizen residing in the country and accused for these crimes in Turkey.
Asked about EU’s position on Turkey’s demands on Sweden, a spokesperson commented last year that it is a bilateral issue between the two countries.
M. Apelblat
The Brussels Times
