For Stockholm, the priority now is to prevent at all costs that the crisis provoked by the burning of the Koran in front of the Turkish Embassy on January 21 does not degenerate like that caused by the publication of twelve caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad in the danish daily Jutland Posten, September 30, 2005. At the beginning of 2006, the demonstrations in many Muslim countries had caused about fifty deaths. Several embassies and consulates of the kingdom had been set on fire, while a boycott was decreed against Danish products.
It then took years to repair the weakened diplomatic relations with these countries, including Turkey. In 2009, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan delayed the appointment of former Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen to the post of NATO Secretary General, criticizing him for his handling of the affair.
This time, Turkey is directly targeted, since it is in front of its embassies in Stockholm, on January 21, then in Copenhagen, on January 27, that the Swedish-Danish right-wing extremist Rasmus Paludan burned a copy of the Koran, promising to start again every Friday until Ankara accepts the accession of Sweden and Finland to NATO.
Even if Rasmus Paludan finally gave up on February 3, his outbursts have already had consequences: in recent weeks, demonstrations have taken place in Turkey but also in Pakistan, Iraq or Afghanistan, where demonstrators have burned the Swedish flag. Several countries have officially condemned the burning of the Koran, such as Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, but also organizations such as the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation ( OIC). In Cairo on January 25, Al-Azhar University called “to the boycott of Swedish and Dutch products”.
Istanbul denounces “psychological warfare”
Because Rasmus Paludan seems to have aroused vocations: on January 22, a leader of the Dutch Islamophobic movement Pediga was filmed, near Parliament, tearing pages from a copy of the Koran, before trampling them. In Oslo, the Islamophobic organization Sian was not allowed to burn this book in front of the Turkish embassy. If the police recalled that the burning of holy books was authorized in the country – as in Sweden or Denmark -, they estimated that “security could not be guaranteed”.
Thursday, February 2, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Ankara summoned the ambassadors of nine countries, including France, the United States and Sweden, who decided, in recent days, to temporarily close their diplomatic representations in Turkey, for security reasons. Most of these countries, such as France, have also called on their nationals to be vigilant, due to the risk of an attack. ” pupil “, especially in Istanbul. Turkish Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu denounced “psychological warfare” against his country.
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