International media are now reporting on the Koran burning in Stockholm and the protests against Turkey and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. And in Turkey and other Arab countries, people are reacting and protesting, including by burn the Swedish flag and protest in several cities.
Toni Alaranta is a Turkey analyst and senior researcher at FIIA, specializing in Turkey’s domestic and foreign policy and the Kurdish issue. He tells SVT Nyheter that Danish-Swedish Rasmus Paludan’s burning of the Koran has also attracted attention in Finland.
– Many of us in Finland see it as an unnecessary provocation that worsens the relationship between Sweden and Turkey. In that respect, it is an unnecessary development, says Alaranta.
He notes that Finland also has a strong and long tradition of freedom of expression. This week published the Finnish evening newspaper Illtalehti also a caricature depicting the Erdogan doll that was hoisted outside Stockholm’s city hall, at the same time as the Swedish one Flamman announced a satire competition with Erdogan as the object.
Toni Alaranta says that there have been protests in Finland as well, but not to the same extent, and that this may be due to the fact that there are significantly more people with Kurdish roots living in Sweden.
He also believes that the strong reactions from Turkey, and the harsher rhetoric towards Sweden from the very beginning, are not only about being wronged.
– Even if there had not been a single PKK demonstration during these months, we would basically have been in the same situation. Erdogan has tried to use this domestically in the run-up to the upcoming election but also to pressure the US and also other NATO countries, says Alaranta.
He considers it unlikely that Finland, in light of the current political situation, would drop the idea of a joint NATO process with Sweden.
– I think that Sweden and Finland have done pretty much everything we have been able to do.
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