CoE: Turkey Using Sweden’s NATO Membership Bid To Extend Repression

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (right) and Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson attend a press conference after their meeting in Ankara, 8 November 2022. Photo: EPA-EFE/NECATI SAVAS

"The Assembly specifically calls upon Turkey to end its intimidation of Bulent Kenes, to recognise and respect the decision of the Swedish Supreme Court and curtail its policy of using its veto on Sweden's membership to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) as a tool of transnational repression," the report written by Christopher Chope, a British member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, PACE, said.

Kenes was a former editor-in-chief of Today's Zaman newspaper in Turkey, a paper affiliated with exiled government critic Fethullah Gulen. Following a failed coup attempt in Turkey in 2016, Kenes, like tens of thousands of others, found refuge abroad in Sweden, obtaining political asylum there.

Gulen, a Muslim preacher living in the US, denies any connection with the coup attempt but Ankara defines his network as the "Fethullahist Terrorist Organisation", or FETO for short, a classification Western countries do not accept.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's government recently pushed Sweden to extradite political refuges including Kenes in return of its approval for its NATO membership bid.

Despite all calls and warnings, Erdogan still has not approved Sweden's membership bid amidst Russia's Invasion of Ukraine.

"This behaviour is unacceptable to all those who support the rule of law and serves as an example of the type of pressure which some countries seek to exercise over others to pursue what is essentially another aspect of transnational repression. Even prior to the Turkish Government's statement a pro...