Flag incident: Turkey urges Sweden to act

Warning raises stakes for Nato membership support ahead of a mid-July summit

Turkey yesterday called on Nato hopeful Sweden to prosecute those responsible for projecting the flag of an outlawed group onto the parliament building in Stockholm, on the day of Turkish elections that extended President Tayyip Erdogan’s rule.

A parliament spokesperson said people projected messages onto the building in Sweden’s capital late on Sunday, adding it had no documentation about what was projected.

The warning could raise the stakes ahead of a mid-July Nato summit at which some alliance members are urging Turkey to back Sweden’s membership bid, after a year of delays over concerns that Stockholm must do more to take on militant groups.

Messages supporting PKK

Footage first shared on Twitter by the so-called Swedish Solidarity Committee for Rojava — a reference to Kurdish regions of Syria — projected a flag of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) on the parliament building. Another image shared by the account includes text reading ‘Freedom for Ocalan’, referring to the PKK’s jailed leader Abdullah Ocalan.

“We expect the Swedish authorities to investigate this incident, hold accountable those responsible, and stop self-identified members of PKK, which the EU recognises as a terrorist entity, from operating on Swedish soil,” Fahrettin Altun, the Turkish presidency’s communications director, said on Twitter.

The parliament spokesperson said: “During the night towards Monday, a number of people stood on a quay on the other side of the water seen from the Riksdag [Swedish parliament] building and projected messages onto the Riksdag building.” “The persons left when the Riksdag’s security guards arrived,” the spokesperson added in an email.

The incident took place after Erdogan won a mandate in runoff elections to carry on his muscular foreign policy in which Turkey objected to both Sweden’s and Finland’s bids to join Nato last year in the face of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Turkey wants Sweden to prosecute those responsible for projecting the flag of an outlawed group onto the parliament building in Stockholm, on the day of Turkish elections.