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SWEDEN AND TURKEY

‘Islamist dictator’: Swedish far-right leader rejects further concessions to Turkey

Jimmie Åkesson, the leader of the far-right Sweden Democrats, slammed Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan as an 'Islamist dictator', as the latter maintains his objections to ratifying Sweden's Nato application.

Published: 19 January 2023 06:36 CET
'Islamist dictator': Swedish far-right leader rejects further concessions to Turkey
Sweden Democrat leader Jimmie Åkesson, whose party is a key ally of the Swedish government. Photo: Fredrik Sandberg/TT

Jimmie Åkesson, whose party is currently propping up the Swedish government, made the comments in an interview with the Dagens Nyheter newspaper published on Wednesday.

There are limits on how far the country would go to appease Turkey to secure its Nato membership “…because it is ultimately an anti-democratic system and a dictator we are dealing with,” Åkesson told the newspaper.

Åkesson also questioned whether Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who prides himself on having never lost a national election over 20 years of rule, could be called democratically elected.

“I’m the party leader for the anti-islamic party SD and I have strong views on an Islamist dictator like Erdoğan. He is elected by the people, yes. But so is Putin in that sense,” Åkesson said.

The anti-immigration Sweden Democrats (SD) rose to be the country’s second largest party in the September general election with 20.54 percent of the vote. Their support is crucial in order to prop up Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson’s right-wing coalition government.

Turkey and Hungary are the only two countries who have yet to ratify Sweden’s Nato membership.

Ankara wants Stockholm to crack down on activists close to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) before it will approve Sweden’s Nato aspirations.

It also wants them to go after people accused of ties to Fethullah Gulen, a US-based preacher it accuses of involvement over a failed 2016 coup, but who Washington has refused to extradite.

Åkesson’s comments come a week after pro-Kurdish activists hung an effigy of Erdoğan by its legs outside Stockholm city hall. The display was meant to evoke the fate of Italy’s dictator Benito Mussolini, whose body was strung up after he was shot dead in 1945.

Both the Turkish and Swedish governments condemned the act, but that sparked a debate in Sweden about the need to avoid making sacrifices on freedom of expression.

Turkey and Sweden signed a memorandum of understanding at the end of June, paving the way for the membership process to begin. But Ankara says its demands remain unfulfilled – in particular for the extradition of Turkish citizens Turkey wants to prosecute for “terrorism”.

The Swedish government has stressed that the Swedish judiciary has the final say in these cases – and that the courts are independent.

On Saturday, Erdoğan’s foreign policy adviser Ibrahim Kalin told reporters that the country was “not in a position” to ratify Sweden’s Nato membership.

Member comments

  1. Even a broken clock tells the correct time twice a day. As for Turkey’s “demands”, they have nothing to do with Sweden. Turkey is blackmailing Uncle Sam in order to receive F16 fighterjets, to do to Greece what Russia is doing to Ukraine. Imo Sweden has already been humiliated by Turkey, no need to continue doing that.

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For members

WORK PERMITS

Business leaders: Work permit threshold ‘has no place in Swedish labour model’

Sweden's main business group has attacked a proposal to exempt some jobs from a new minimum salary for work permits, saying it is "unacceptable" political interference in the labour model and risks seriously affecting national competitiveness.

Published: 25 April 2024 17:37 CEST
Updated: 26 April 2024 06:11 CEST
Business leaders: Work permit threshold 'has no place in Swedish labour model'

The Confederation of Swedish Enterprise said in its response to the government’s consultation, submitted on Thursday afternoon, that it not only opposed the proposal to raise the minimum salary for a work permit to Sweden’s median salary (currently 34,200 kronor a month), but also opposed plans to exempt some professions from the higher threshold. 

“To place barriers in the way of talent recruitment by bringing in a highly political salary threshold in combination with labour market testing is going to worsen the conditions for Swedish enterprise in both the short and the long term, and risks leading to increased fraud and abuse,” the employer’s group said.   

The group, which represents businesses across most of Sweden’s industries, has been critical of the plans to further raise the salary threshold for work permits from the start, with the organisation’s deputy director general, Karin Johansson, telling The Local this week that more than half of those affected by the higher threshold would be skilled graduate recruits Swedish businesses sorely need.   

But the fact that it has not only rejected the higher salary threshold, but also the proposed system of exemptions, will nonetheless come as a blow to Sweden’s government, and particular the Moderate Party led by Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson, which has long claimed to be the party of business. 

The confederation complained that the model proposed in the conclusions of the government inquiry published in February would give the government and political parties a powerful new role in setting salary conditions, undermining the country’s treasured system of collective bargaining. 

The proposal for the higher salary threshold, was, the confederation argued, “wrong in principle” and did “not belong in the Swedish labour market”. 

“That the state should decide on the minimum salary for certain foreign employees is an unacceptable interference in the Swedish collective bargaining model, where the parties [unions and employers] weigh up various needs and interested in negotiations,” it wrote. 

In addition, the confederation argued that the proposed system where the Sweden Public Employment Service and the Migration Agency draw up a list of exempted jobs, which would then be vetted by the government, signified the return of the old system of labour market testing which was abolished in 2008.

“The government agency-based labour market testing was scrapped because of it ineffectiveness, and because it was unreasonable that government agencies were given influence over company recruitment,” the confederation wrote. 

“The system meant long handling times, arbitrariness, uncertainty for employers and employees, as well as an indirect union veto,” it added. “Nothing suggests it will work better this time.” 

For a start, it said, the Public Employment Service’s list of professions was inexact and outdated, with only 179 professions listed, compared to 430 monitored by Statistics Sweden. This was particularly the case for new skilled roles within industries like battery manufacturing. 

“New professions or smaller professions are not caught up by the classification system, which among other things is going to make it harder to recruit in sectors which are important for the green industrial transition,” the confederation warned. 

Rather than implement the proposals outlined in the inquiry’s conclusions, it concluded, the government should instead begin work on a new national strategy for international recruitment. 

“Sweden instead needs a national strategy aimed at creating better conditions for Swedish businesses to be able to attract, recruit and retain international competence.”

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