Swedish Left Livid Over NATO Deal With Turkey, Threaten Foreign Minister With No-Confidence Vote

The invitation to NATO became possible after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan dropped his opposition to the Nordic nations' membership following concessions made in a trilateral agreement. Previously, Ankara delayed Finland and Sweden's NATO bids over their alleged sheltering of Kurdish paramilitaries Turkey classifies as terrorists.

After Turkey ultimately dropped its blockade of the NATO bids of Finland and Sweden following a trilateral agreement, the two formerly non-aligned Nordic countries were formally invited to join the alliance.

According to the agreement, Finland and Sweden pledged not to support the YPG and PYD, the Kurdish organizations in northern Syria that the Social Democrats, Sweden's ruling party, specifically promised to support in an earlier agreement with political maverick Amineh Kakabaveh in order to secure the post for current Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson.

Finland and Sweden also confirmed that the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) is a “proscribed terrorist organization” and promised to take measures to deport “terror suspects” to Turkey and rejected terrorism in all forms. Subsequently, AFP reported that Turkey had also requested the extradition of 33 people suspected of terrorism from Sweden and Finland.

This has not been well-received by the Swedish left. Iranian-born Amineh Kakabaveh, formerly a Kurdish Peshmerga fighter and now a political maverick, whose vote of support on several occasions has been crucial for bailing out the Social Democrat government, is furious over the agreement, calling it “a very black day in Swedish peace history”.

“It is worrying that during the NATO accession, the rights of Kurds are being negotiated away,” Kakabaveh told the newspaper Expressen, calling the Social Democrats “unreliable” and accusing them of “making concessions to an Islamist dictatorship and authoritarian regime”.

Furthermore, Kakavabeh voiced plans to set forth a vote of no confidence against Foreign Minister Ann Linde.

Among Sweden's left-wing politicians in general, criticism of the Social Democrats is fierce after the agreement with Turkey. Greens spokeswoman Märta Stenevi, former Minister of Housing, said that her party requested Ann Linde to report to the Foreign Affairs Committee on the exact content of the Turkey agreement. “Very worrying changes regarding, among other things, arms exports and deportations,” Stenevi commented on Twitter.

“This is what the yes-side said would never happen. We should never let Turkey set the terms of our membership. Now we see that Sweden is making major concessions in things that only a few years ago were very clear principles,” Greens second spokesman Per Bolund told Swedish Radio.

According to Expressen, the Greens are now discussing requesting a no-confidence vote against Foreign Minister Ann Linde with the Left Party as well.

“We warned early on of the dangers of putting Swedish security policy in the hands of despot Erdogan. But the government denied that this would happen. Now we have to get the cards on the table. Should Sweden arm Turkey in its war of aggression against Syria? Which critics of the regime should be expelled?”, Left leader Nooshi Dadgostar tweeted.

However, the Social Democrats' party secretary Tobias Baudin, who previously said that the “Kurdish” agreement with Kakabaveh applies, explained that the deal with Turkey doesn't conflict with the previous agreement with Kakabaveh, because the Swedish accession to NATO will not take place until after the end of the term, when the current agreement with Kakabaveh has expired.

Internationally, left-wing politicians also condemned the deal.

“Today is a shameful day for Finland's & Sweden's political classes. In one fell swoop they demolished a tradition their predecessors built over decades of supporting the rights of oppressed peoples. Denouncing, at the instructions of Erdogan, the brave YPG women fighters tops it,” former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis tweeted.

Screengrab of tweet by Yanis Varoufakis

© Photo

The two Nordic nations had abandoned decades of principled non-alignment and applied to join NATO in May, following the start of Russia’s special operation to demilitarize and de-Nazify in Ukraine in February, which also aimed to protect the inhabitants of Donbass. Both have justified their membership bids for the alliance by citing the crisis in Ukraine and the Russian “threat”.