Afar-right Swedish politician’s decision to burn the Quran in front of the Turkish Embassy could be part of a plot to undermine Sweden’s bid to join NATO, according to Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s team.
“There is of course the concern that provocateurs, those who may not want to see Sweden join NATO, are engaging in some of these activities,” State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters on Tuesday.
The choreographed Quran burning occurred at an unfortunate moment for Sweden, which is in the midst of a diplomatic struggle to secure Turkey’s approval to join NATO alongside Finland. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan cited the incident as a new justification for blocking Sweden’s admission to the alliance, forcing Swedish officials to scramble to mollify a leader wield his diplomatic leverage against Stockholm.
“Our collective message is that we want to call for calm, for reflection, for calm in the process so that we can return to functioning talks between Sweden, Finland, and Turkey on our common NATO membership,” Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said Tuesday. “No national security question is more important than that we with Finland quickly become members of NATO.”
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Turkish officials canceled a trilateral meeting with Finland and Sweden that has been expected to take place in February.
“It is obvious that those, who allowed such a scandal outside our country’s embassy, can no longer expect any favor from us concerning their NATO membership application,” Erdogan said Monday. “Noting that those, who had urged or turned a blind eye on this deviant act under the protection of their own security and police forces, had undoubtedly taken the consequences.”
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Erdogan, as the leader of a NATO member, has the power to veto Sweden’s entry into the trans-Atlantic alliance, a bloc that operates by unanimous consent. Sweden and Finland have agreed to a number of concessions intended to mollify the Turkish president, but Erdogan’s allegation that they are harboring terrorists has led to an impasse over extradition demands that haven’t passed legal muster in Sweden.
“Turkey sometimes names people that they would like to have extradited from Sweden, and it’s well known that Swedish legislation on that … is very clear: that courts [make] those decisions — there is no room for changing that,” the Swedish prime minister said last week.
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The latest controversy spurred Finnish Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto to suggest early Tuesday that his government might have to “assess the situation” and consider whether to proceed into NATO without Sweden. The two governments have sought to avoid that prospect, in part due to centuries of diplomatic alignment between their capitals, and Haavisto clarified that it remains their preference to join in tandem with Sweden.
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Blinken’s team hastened to close ranks with Sweden. “This has always been a discussion about Finland and Sweden, two countries, moving from an alliance of 28 to an alliance of 30. That is what we want to see happen,” Price said. “It’s just a question that we’re not entertaining.”
