Flags of Finland, NATO and SwedenMOSCOW, June 8 Sweden's accession to NATO caused outrage among the local Kurdish diaspora, which is fairly well represented in the government, writes The Wall Street Journal. As noted in the article, the Kurds fear that as political pressure intensifies, they may lose one of their key havens if Stockholm makes active concessions from Ankara, demanding to stop supporting the Workers Kurdistan Party (PKK) in exchange for supporting Sweden's entry into the alliance.Media: Turkey has set ten conditions for Sweden and Finland on NATO membership»We Kurds respect Sweden's decision to join NATO. But we do not want membership in the alliance and good relations with Turkey to be built at our expense,» Shiyar Ali said. living in Stockholm, the northern representative of the so-called Kurdish Autonomous Administration in northeastern Syria. The publication cited unofficial statistics according to which about a hundred thousand Kurds live in Sweden, which is 1% of the total population of the country. In addition, they have gained great political influence: six Swedish parliamentarians are of Kurdish origin, and the coalition government, led by Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson, relies on a one-member majority. Amina Kakabaweh, a former guerrilla who helped the government deepen cooperation with the Kurdish self-governing region in northern Syria, has the deciding vote. She is already using her power to defend the position of the diaspora in relations between Sweden and Turkey. So Kakabaweh refused to vote on the government's budget, which will be discussed this month, if the authorities give in to any of Erdogan's demands.
"I used to be so proud of Sweden, but not now. My proposal is to withdraw the application for NATO membership. We should not sell our values and dignity to Erdogan", Kakabaveh said, adding that the risk of an agreement between Stockholm and Ankara at the cost of the position of the Kurds is quite real.
Finland and Sweden against the background of the events in Ukraine on May 18 handed over to the NATO Secretary General an application for joining the alliance. Turkey has blocked the start of the process of their consideration. Erdogan said that Ankara is against it because it cannot believe their assurances about ties with representatives of the banned PKK in Turkey. threats to Finland and Sweden, said PeskovIn Russia, they say that NATO is aimed at confrontation. Presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that further expansion of the alliance would not bring greater security to Europe. At the same time, he noted that he does not consider the entry of Sweden and Finland into NATO an existential threat to Russia. Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin is sure that abandoning Finland's traditional policy of military neutrality would be erroneous, since there are no threats to its security.
NATO refuses to guarantee non-deployment of nuclear weapons in Finland