The right-wing bloc including the anti-migrant Sweden Democrats has made important gains in the Swedish elections on Sunday, with partial results on Monday projecting that the coalition of centre-right and far-right parties could be poised to oust the incumbent left-wing bloc led by the Social Democrats.
While the results are not due until Wednesday, and the Social Democrats could still edge out their rivals, the results mark a large gain for the Sweden Democrats, which campaigned on an anti-migrant and anti-Islamic platform after a decade in which the country welcomed over 10 million asylum seekers.
Prior to the elections, the Social Democrat Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson sent a message to the Kurds, guaranteeing not to return any Kurds who were Swedish citizens to Turkey as long as they could not be proved to be involved in terrorism according to Swedish law. Sweden and Finland both agreed on 28 June to accept most of Turkey’s demands in return of its support for the Nordic countries’ NATO membership, including the extradition of dozens of Kurds wanted by Ankara on charges of terrorism.
She said, “As long as I am prime minister in Sweden, we will always stand up for Kurdish rights, and I think it is very important to be clear: with the agreement we have with Turkey, we will not expel any people with Kurdish background and Swedish citizenship who are not part of terrorist activities, according to Swedish legislation. So, anyone who is not involved in terrorist action according to Swedish legislation can be perfectly safe.”
The right-wing gains come as something of a surprise, as the latest polls before the elections gave the Social Democrats an 8-point lead over the Sweden Democrats, who are gaining on promises to crack down on shootings and gang violence. At the end of Sunday, the right-wing bloc appeared to have gained 176 seats, as opposed to 173 gained by the left-wing bloc. The final result will be announced after the counting of ballots from abroad and advance voting.
The Sweden Democrats were founded in 1988 with roots in Swedish fascism and white nationalism, though they officially reject these ideologies today. The party has experienced a meteoric rise in fortunes in the last 12 years since the 2010 election, when it gained 5.7% of the vote, to 20.6% as of Sunday evening. The leader of the party, Jimmie Åkesson, is quoted as saying that Muslim immigration to Sweden was “our biggest foreign threat since the second world war.”
