Sweden’s NATO Bid in Limbo as Top Court Slaps Down Turkish Extradition Request for 'Gulenist' Journo

Sweden and Finland’s NATO membership bid has been ratified by 28 of the bloc’s 30 members, with Turkey and Hungary holding up the process. Ankara has given the Nordics a series of conditions for support for their membership in the bloc; observers in Stockholm and Helsinki have grumbled about the demands’ implications for their sovereignty.

Sweden’s Supreme Court has blocked the extradition of a Turkish-born journalist claiming asylum in the Nordic nation back to his home country, on the grounds that the man has not been found guilty of any crimes in Sweden, and that he may be persecuted for his political views at home.

“It is clear that in this case there are several obstacles to extradition,” Supreme Court judge Petter Asp said in a statement Monday. “Extradition cannot therefore take place.”

The wanted man in question is one Bulent Kenes, a Turkish journalist mentioned by name by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan last month when he listed off Turkey’s conditions for the approval of Sweden’s NATO membership bid.

Turkish authorities accuse the 55-year-old journalist of playing a role in the attempted coup attempt in 2016, with Kenes working at the time as editor of the Today’s Zaman newspaper, an Istanbul-headquartered outlet which ceased publication after the coup plot failed. Today's Zaman was deemed by authorities to be the “flagship media organization” of US-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen. Gulen, a former Erdogan ally, had a falling out with the Turkish president in 2013, and Erdogan has demanded his extradition from the US. Successive US administrations have dismissed these demands.

“There is one member of the [Gulen] terrorist organization in Sweden whose name I will give: Bulent Kenes,” Erdogan said in a meeting with Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson on November 8. “For example, the deportation of this terrorist to Turkey is of great importance to us, and we of course want Sweden to act with more sensitivity.”

Among the “obstacles” to extradition listed by the Supreme Court on Monday are the “non-criminalized” nature of the charges in Sweden of the crimes Kenes is suspected of having committed in Turkey, which the court called “a matter of so-called political crimes, i.e. crimes that are directed against the state and that are political in nature.”

“There is also a risk of persecution base on this person’s political believes. An extradition can thusly not take place,” Asp said in his statement.

Kenes, 55, is now employed by the ‘Stockholm Center for Freedom’, and advocacy organization founded in 2017 by other Turkish journalists with alleged links to the Gulen movement.

Sweden’s limited resistance in extraditing asylum-seekers and members of groups which Ankara classifies as “terrorist” entities has led to uncertainty as to whether Turkey will ultimately approve Stockholm’s NATO bid.

Sweden has sought to accommodate Turkey, signing a memorandum in June designed to 'address Ankara’s security concerns', and promising to crack down on Kurdish militants living and operating in the country. Last month, for example, Stockholm sent Mahmut Tat, a man with alleged ties to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, back to Turkey. Tat fled to Sweden in 2015 after being sentenced to a six+ year prison sentence in his home country.

Some political forces and rights groups in the Nordic countries have called on their politicians to grow more of a backbone and stop Turkey from adding to their ever-growing list of demands for approval of NATO membership, and to address Scandinavia's concerns. Earlier this month, for example, Stockholm turned the tables on Ankara’s claims about criminals hiding in Sweden by alleging that about a dozen Swedish criminals are hiding in Turkey, and demanding that “Swedish justice…be brought to Sweden.”

Turkey’s hard line on the suspected terrorist and Gulenist forces hiding out in Sweden has been criticized extensively by Western think tanks, ex-officials and media, with some observers going so far as to suggest that Ankara be kicked out of NATO over its insolence before the US-dominated alliance.