Turkey Is Impeding New NATO Defense Strategy, Vetoing Sweden’s Entrance Into the Military Alliance – Today’s Koran Burning in Stockholm Complicates Scandinavian’s Bid | The Gateway Pundit | by Paul Serran | 176

NATO diplomats are scrambling to solve last-minute problems leading up to the summit set for July 11 and 12, in Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital.

And many of those problems deal with Turkey’s participation in the defense block. For one, there was a frenzy to try to have Turkey’s leader Erdogan to change his mind and greenlight Sweden’s bid. It would be an embarrassment if they miss their stated target of having Stockholm join by the next summit.

But Turkey has additional demands that threaten to hold up the launch of NATO’s new defense strategy, said to be ‘the most ambitious overhaul to be drafted since the end of the Cold War’.

Al Monitor reported:

“With two weeks left before NATO‘s forthcoming summit in Vilnius next month, Al-Monitor has learned Turkey is upping its demands for the alliance’s defense strategy, requesting that critical waterways connecting the Black Sea to the Aegean be referred to as the ‘Turkish Straits’ rather than the ‘Straits’. 

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan also continues to pressure Sweden to crack down on alleged Kurdish terrorist sympathizers as a precondition for ratifying the Nordic country’s addition to the alliance.

In a phone call with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg on Sunday, Erdogan said that Ankara was engaging constructively with Sweden but that the latter’s stiffening of its anti-terror legislation was ‘meaningless’ so long as supporters of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party and its Syrian affiliates were permitted to stage demonstrations against Turkey in the Swedish capital.”

A high-level Turkish delegation was initially scheduled to meet with their Swedish counterparts, but events today in Stockholm may have thrown a spanner in the works.

Telegraph reported:

“A man tore up and burned a copy of the Koran outside Stockholm’s main mosque on Wednesday in a move that angered Turkey and dented the Nordic nation’s Nato aspirations.

Salwan Momika’s demonstration coincided with the start of the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha and drew an immediate rebuke from Ankara, which has blocked Sweden’s ascension to the transatlantic security alliance over alleged security concerns.”

While it was a two-person demonstration and it only gathered about 200 people to witness or counterprotest, the potential damage to the Turkish-Swedish relationship is evident.

“Prior to the protest, Ulf Kristersson, the Swedish prime minister, said he would not speculate on how it could affect his country’s Nato membership bid, which was launched in response to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

‘It’s legal but not appropriate’, he said, adding that it was up to the police to make decisions on Koran burnings.”

Turkey initially suspended NATO talks with Sweden in January, after a anti-immigration political party torched a copy of the Koran near the Turkish embassy, in Stockholm.

This time, the reaction was also immediate.

CNN repoted:

“Turkey condemned a decision by Swedish authorities to approve a small Quran-burning demonstration outside a mosque in Stockholm on Wednesday, a move that may jeopardize Sweden’s bid to join NATO before the bloc’s key summit in July.

[…] The decision to permit the protest was made in accordance with the right of freedom of speech, Swedish police said, adding that the demonstration does not pose an immediate security risk.”

Turkey’s foreign minister, Hakan Fidan:

“It is unacceptable to allow these anti-Islamic actions under the pretext of freedom of expression. To turn a blind eye to such heinous acts is to be complicit in them.”