Ex-Swedish foreign minister admits 'we didn't take terrorist threat to Türkiye seriously'

As the world looks ahead to next week’s NATO summit, with Sweden’s membership bid in the spotlight, a former Swedish foreign minister has admitted that her country failed to take seriously the terrorist threats faced by longtime member Türkiye.

"I think that Turkey is seriously exposed to terrorist attacks and other countries, including us, are not taking it seriously," said Ann Linde, who served as Sweden’s foreign minister for three years until last October.

Sweden applied for NATO membership last year – when Linde was still in office – after Russia launched its war on Ukraine, but Türkiye has said the country needs to do more to address its security concerns before gaining membership, including its failure to take a stand again terror groups threatening Türkiye, and tolerating or even supporting such groups on its soil.

Speaking in a documentary public broadcaster SVT aired on Friday, Linde addressed the terrorist group PKK/YPG’s financial activities in Sweden, saying that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan “has the right to criticize (these) financial resources. This is Erdogan's right to criticize Sweden for not taking the threats by the terrorist organization PKK seriously.”

Stockholm has been criticized by Ankara for housing members of various terrorist groups for decades, especially the PKK and, in the recent years, the Fetullah Terrorist Organization (FETO), the group behind the 2016 defeated coup attempt in Türkiye.

The documentary was broadcast a day after Stockholm convicted a PKK sympathizer of firearms offense and attempted terror financing. The conviction is the first of its kind.

In its verdict, the court said: "What particularly affects the length of the prison sentence, four-and-a-half-years, is the convicted man's use of weapons and allusions to belonging to the terrorist organization PKK, which is judged to have a large capital of violence."

In its more than 35-year terror campaign against Türkiye, the PKK – listed as a terrorist organization by Türkiye, the US and EU – has been responsible for the deaths of over 40,000 people, including women, children, and infants. The YPG is the terrorist PKK’s Syrian branch.

Some of Türkiye’s Western allies in NATO have pressed for Sweden to get the membership greenlight before next week’s summit in Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital, set for July 9-11. But Turkish leaders have stressed that the matter of security concerns about Sweden is not to be taken lightly, and that they can approve the membership when those concerns are satisfied, not before.

All current members of NATO – including Türkiye, a member for over 70 years – must approve of any new additions to the alliance.