Turkey blasts Swedish extradition refusal as ‘very unfavorable’ 

Turkey’s top diplomat blasted a Swedish ruling which can block the extradition of a journalist wanted by Ankara as “very unfavorable” Tuesday ahead of his Swedish counterpart’s visit to Turkey.

Sweden and Finland — which have dropped their historical military non-alignment policy in the face of the Russian invasion of Ukraine — applied to join NATO, but Turkey has been holding up the process, which requires consensus among all alliance members. Ankara made a series of demands in return for supporting the enlargement, including the extradition of dozens of people over their ties to groups that Ankara considers terrorist organizations.

On Monday, Sweden’s Supreme Court rejected the extradition of Bulent Kenes, who was singled out by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan last month during Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson’s visit to Turkey. 

“The rejection of our request for the extradition of Bulent Kenes is a very unfavorable development,” Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said during a live presser, adding that he would discuss the matter with his Swedish counterpart Tobias Billstrom, who is set to travel to Turkey for enlargement talks on Thursday. 

Kenes is the former editor-in-chief of Today’s Zaman, an English-language newspaper linked to the Gulen movement, which is widely accused of masterminding the 2016 coup attempt against the Turkish government. Ankara designated the movement led by US-based Sunni imam Fethullah Gulen as a terrorist organization; it calls FETO.

Sweden and Finland pledged to address Ankara’s security concerns during a NATO summit in June under a trilateral memorandum that paved the way for the official invitations extended to the Nordic capitals.

“FETO is clearly mentioned” in the June deal, Cavusoglu said, adding, “These coup plotters there must be extradited to Turkey.”

Swedish Justice Minister Gunnar Strommer reportedly said Tuesday that the Swedish government has yet to make a final decision about the extradition.

“Both countries are obliged to fulfill whatever is in the trilateral memorandum and we will make our evaluations accordingly,” Cavusoglu said.

Earlier this month, Sweden extradited an individual over his links to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). Yet the man had not been on the list of names that Ankara submitted to Stockholm.

If Stockholm expects to “close the deal by extraditing one person, then this is not a realistic expectation,” the top diplomat said. “In other words, we no longer want to hear beautiful words from Sweden and Finland; we want to see concrete steps.”

Turkey and Hungary remain the sole NATO countries that have yet to ratify the alliance’s enlargement. Budapest has announced that its parliament would approve the enlargement in early 2023. 

In addition to the extraditions, Ankara has been pressing for the freezing of terror assets and lifting of de facto defense sales embargoes on Turkey. Stockholm lifted the ban against exporting military equipment to Turkey in September and passed a constitutional amendment tightening its anti-terror laws in early November. 

The total number of people that Turkey seeks from Sweden remains unclear. Under the June deal, the Nordic capitals also pledged not to provide support to Syria’s Kurdish Democratic Union Party, its armed wing the People Protection Units (YPG) or the PKK. Stockholm and Helsinki also agreed “to address [Turkey’s] pending deportation or extradition requests of terror suspects.” 

The PKK has been fighting for self-rule inside Turkey for some four decades and is considered a terrorist organization by several Western countries including the United States. Turkey equates the YPG — the backbone of the US-allied Syrian Democratic Forces — with the PKK.