Turkey accused Sweden earlier of aiding Kurdish groups it considered terrorists.
Swedish Foreign Minister Ann Linde on Tuesday condemned members of the country’s Left Party for posing with the flags of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and its Syrian offshoots, the YPG and YPJ, during a political event. Turkey just lifted its objection to Sweden joining NATO under the condition it “prevent activities of the PKK.”
Lorena Delgado Vaas, Momodou Malcolm Jarlon, and Daniel Riazat were seen holding the flags for these Kurdish organizations at the Almedalen Week festival. This annual political forum was held on Gotland’s island.
The PKK is considered terrorist by Sweden, the European Union and Turkey. Ankara considers both the YPG, and the YPJ terrorist organizations.
Linde described these photos as “In a Tweet tagging Justice minister Morgan Johansson,” “completely unacceptable.”
“The PKK was branded a terrorist group as early as 1984, by Olof Palme’s government,”Twitter, she wrote. “And for good reason. The PKK has many innocent human lives on its conscience.”
Leftists supported their support for the Kurds. “We are all behind this,”Vargas spoke to the Aftonbladet newspaper Monday. “Our party has made a party congress decision that the PKK should not be listed as a terrorist.”
Turkey’s low-intensity campaign against the PKK (and its Syrian offshoots) has continued since the 1980s. Occasionally, Turkey launches military attacks into Syria to attack Kurdish fighters.
When Sweden and Finland applied to join the NATO alliance in May, Turkey threatened to block both countries’ accession unless they lifted an arms embargo on Ankara, extradited several Kurdish and other “terror suspects,”They also cracked down on PKK activities inside their borders. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government also accused Sweden of arming the PKK with rocket launchers, which Linde vehemently denied.
However, Turkey dropped its objections to the Nordic countries’ bids last month after the three countries agreed to a ten-point memorandum that Stockholm and Helsinki would “prevent activities of the PKK and all other terrorist organisations and their extensions.”
Johannson responded to the incident after Linde’s tweet, stating that “the leadership of the Left Party should immediately distance itself from this action.”
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