Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan wants Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson to fire Defence Minister Peter Hultqvist over his alleged Kurdish ties, the Swedish newspaper Expressen reported, citing an informant.
“Turkey wants Hultqvist removed as defence minister,” the informant said, stressing that this issue has been raised in contacts between the governments of both countries as they discussed Sweden's recent NATO bid.
According to the newspaper, Turkey's demand is based on a speech Hultqvist gave at a party in 2011 in the city of Borlänge organised by the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and celebrating its 33rd birthday.
When confronted over the controversial celebration, Hultqvist replied the following: “I said that you should respect the Kurds as a people, that it is wrong to persecute those who are members of the Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party and that it is wrong to imprison people and deny the Kurds the use of their language in official contexts.”
Hultqvist emphasised that while he doesn't support or condone violence or terror, he saw “no problem” with going to the meeting and saying what he had said. He furthermore stressed that a peaceful solution to the Kurdish question is “the most important thing”.
Nevertheless, the revelation of Hultqvist's attendance caused great anger in Turkey, which wants him removed. According to Expressen, Hultqvist has since appeared in a report titled “PKK's build-up in Europe” by Turkey's largest think-tank SETA, which is close to Recep Tayyip Erdogan's party AKP.
The Kurdish question appears to have become a bargaining chip in negotiations over the NATO bids of Sweden and Finland.
However, Turkey, a NATO member since 1952 and the country with the second-largest military within the alliance, trailing only the US, objected, accusing the Nordic states of supporting the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, and the Kurdish militia YPG, which are both designated as terrorist organisations by Ankara.
Ankara laid out specific demands for Stockholm and Helsinki to meet before it would back down, which include halting all support for the PKK and other like-minded groups, prohibiting any of their events, extraditing those wanted by Turkey on terrorism charges, and lifting all arms exports restrictions.