Sweden agreeing to Turkey’s demands to stricter crackdown on what Ankara considers terrorist elements has resulted in Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan posing further demands, analyst Michael Rubin wrote in an article for the Washington Examiner on Wednesday.
“In effect, Erdogan hopes to transform Sweden into a Scandinavian Azerbaijan, that is, a proxy state that has forfeited its sovereignty for the sake of short-term favor,” the American Enterprise Institute senior fellow said.
Swedish leaders “should have been smarter”, Rubin said. “Blackmailers and bullies always make new demands when victims cave in to their initial ones.”
Instead, NATO member states as well as applicants Sweden and Finland should have “played hardball”, Rubin continued, leveraging the ailing economy against Ankara’s demands to extradite asylum seekers, many of whom are journalists.
“Today, the best journalism about Turkey occurs outside its borders. Many top-tier journalists live in Stockholm. This has always frustrated Erdogan,” Rubin said.
Abdullah Bozkurt, editor-in-chief for news website Nordic Monitor, was attacked by three men in Stockholm two years ago. Bozkurt, former Ankara representative for newspaper Today’s Zaman, is wanted in Turkey for alleged ties to FETÖ, or the Fethullahist Terrorist Organisation, the name Turkey uses for the followers of Islamic preacher Fethullah Gülen who Turkey holds responsible for the failed coup attempt of 15 July 2016.
Bozkurt’s attackers appeared to be “thugs under Erdogan’s command”, Rubin said.
The newspaper Daily Sabah, owned by Erdoğan’s close allies, published photographs of Bülent Keneş, former news director for Zaman, in Stockholm. “That Turkey would disseminate their home addresses also puts them in the crosshairs of Turkish extremists who act out of adulation of Erdogan and without regard for the law of the countries in which they now live,” Rubin said.
The analyst concluded with a call on US President Joe Biden to offer asylum and funding for journalism that “Erdogan, like so many other autocrats, fears”.
