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Turkey’s Foreign Affairs Ministry summoned Sweden’s ambassador to Turkey on Thursday after a video showing a mannequin of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan hanging from a rope outside the city hall in Stockholm went viral.
A Kurdish group named Swedish solidarity committee for Rojava published a video on Wednesday comparing Erdoğan to Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, who was hung upside down after his execution towards the end of World War II.
The group protests against Sweden’s NATO membership application as the video reads “History shows how dictators often end.”
Sweden’s Foreign Minister Tobias Billstrom condemned the Kurdish group’s demonstration and called the viral video “abhorrent.”
Turkey’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs described the video as “a clear violation of Sweden’s promises” and demanded the source of the video be found so that Sweden can take “the necessary measures.”
In exchange for approving Sweden’s NATO membership, Turkey made some demands from the Nordic country, including to prosecute and extradite Kurdish activists allegedly affiliated with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), not support the People’s Protection Units (YPG) in northeast Syria, and to end the arms embargoes which were imposed on Turkey after its occupation of Syrian territories in 2019.
Kurdish activists and rights groups have been objecting to Sweden agreeing to comply with the obligations the country made to Turkey.
