On June 14, 2023, a Swedish Court said that the police had no legal grounds to block two gatherings where the protestors had planned to burn the Quran Sharif this year.
In January 2023, an incident sparked anger in the entire Muslim world. Outside the Turkish Embassy in Stockholm, the Quran was burned. It led to massive protests, which lasted for weeks and called for a boycott of Swedish goods, and stalled the NATO membership bid of Sweden.
Following the incident, the police and law enforcement agencies refused to authorise two other requests, one of which was done by a private individual and by the other to hold Quran burnings outside of the Iraqi and Swedish embassies in Stockholm in February 2023.
Police argued that the January protests made Sweden a high-priority target for the attacks. Following appeals from both the protest organisers, the Stockholm Administrative Court overturned the decisions and said that the cited security concerns were not enough to limit the right to demonstrate.
But the Stockholm police appealed the rulings to the appeals court which sided with the lower administration. In both rulings on two separate applications, the appeals court said, “The order and security problems referenced by the police did not have a sufficient clear connection to the planned event or its immediate vicinity.”
It added that the ruling court could be appealed to Sweden’s Supreme Administrative Court. The Swedish police agencies authorised the January Protest organised by Rasmus Paludan, a Swedish Danish Activist who has been convicted of racial abuse.
It was he who provoked the rioting in Sweden last year when he went on a tour of the country and burned copies of the Quran. The book-burning incident in January 2023 significantly damaged Turkey-Sweden relations. The Turkish government criticised and took offence that the police authorised the demonstration.
As a result of this, Ankara has blocked Sweden’s NATO bid of what it perceives as Stockholm’s failure to crack down on the Kurdish groups as it views as “terrorists.” It is very clear that those who caused such a disgrace in front of our Embassy can no longer expect any benevolence from us regarding their application for NATO membership, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said in January.
Swedish politicians have criticised the burning of the Quran but also adamantly defended the right to freedom of expression. Apart from these events, a series of anti-Turkey protests in Sweden has deeply infuriated Ankara, and it threatened to delay the Nordic Country’s NATO membership further.
The demonstrations featured the Kurdistan Workers Party symbols and included a mock hanging of Tayyip Erdogan effigy from a lamp post. The Kurdistan Workers Party has been blacklisted by Ankara, the European Union and the United States of America.
All of the thirty members of NATO’s current states need to approve a new member, and Turkey stands out as the key geopolitical player and home to the alliance second largest military has stood up as the primary vocal opponent of the Nordic Countries’ membership. Tukey has decided that it would not support even Finland.
Sweden too, has criticised Turkey for human rights abuses over the Kurds and over democratic standards, which has irked politicians in Ankara
Turkey is the second largest NATO member after the United States of America in Europe.
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