The use of the word ‘Kurdistan’ in bank statements for payments made to a journalist focused on the Kurdish issue has resulted in questioning in at least two European countries. Subscribers in Sweden and Belgium who made payments to the ‘Expert Kurdistan’ newsletter written by prominent Kurdish-focused journalist and regular Medya News contributor Fréderike Geerdink found themselves questioned over the nature and purpose of the payments.
Subscriptions to progressive publishers and news media including Sweden’s Arbetarens, the UK’s Pluto Press, and AK Press in the United States were also singled out for questioning by the Swedish police, on the basis of European-wide money-laundering and terrorism financing laws, along with donations to Kurdish charities, an investigation by Swedish journalist Rasmus Canback found.
The investigations by banks are being conducted in line with new EU measures introduced in 2023 intended to prevent money-laundering, rather than Sweden’s newly-introduced anti-terror law. On 28 March 2023, the European Parliament announced that MEPs had approved stricter rules to close existing gaps in combating what they described as money laundering, terrorist financing, and evasion of sanctions in the European Union. Geerdink tells Medya News: “I’ve been telling people – if they pay for the newsletter, they shouldn’t use the word ‘Kurdistan’. This is not really related to NATO – a little bit, of course – but it’s a Europe-wide, European Commission order.”
At the same time, Sweden has taken further steps toward the criminalisation of the Kurdish movement with the introduction of the new anti-terror law widely seen as intended to appease Turkey, convincing NATO’s second-largest member to drop its opposition to the Nordic country joining the security alliance. Turkey has been wielding its veto as a NATO member in an effort to secure concessions for further repression of the Kurdish diaspora in Europe, renewed arms sales, an end to Sweden’s limited humanitarian support for and facilitation of diplomatic dialogue with Kurdish political actors, and the potential green light for a fresh military operation against the Kurdish-led region of North and East Syria.
Despite the new terror law, which criminalizes ‘participation in a terrorist organisation’ and is expected by members of Sweden’s Kurdish community to lead to further criminalisation and attacks on legitimate political and journalistic repression, Turkey is continuing to obstruct Sweden’s NATO bid, launched in the light of Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine and subsequent deterioration in the security situation on the EU’s eastern flank.
Both the new terror law and the use of the money-laundering laws to target individuals supporting journalism related to the Kurdish issue occur in a climate of continued repression of Kurdish political expression in Europe. Turkey has been able to influence European security policy, with the display of Kurdish insignia, flags, colours and images of Kurdish leader Abdullah Öcalan all leading to repression and arrest in various European countries.
The word ‘Kurdistan’ was banned from the Turkish Parliament in 2017, while the word was also banned outright in Turkey during the 20th century, along with broader prohibitions on the Kurdish language itself. The revelation of the way banks are responding to the new money-laundering laws suggests the extent of Turkey’s continued influence on EU policy.
