The timing couldn’t have been worse. Turkey had already threatened to derail Sweden’s NATO aspirations when a far-right extremist set fire to a Koran outside the Turkish embassy in Stockholm. On Friday, Ankara issued its verdict on Sweden and Finland’s joint NATO bid: For now, Turkey would only start ratifying Finland's application. Several reports have since emerged, meanwhile, pointing to suspected Russia ties among the organisers of the damaging Koran-burning protest.
On January 21, far-right provocateur Rasmus Paludan travelled from Denmark to Sweden to set the holy book of Islam alight in what appeared to be a one-man show in front of the Turkish embassy in Stockholm.
The act sent shockwaves across large parts of the Muslim world, sparking mass protests in Pakistan, Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, and of course in Turkey, where anti-Sweden rallies grew so violent that the Swedish embassy in Ankara was briefly forced to close.
Politically, the Koran-burning was nothing short of a disaster for Sweden. For months on end, Sweden had tried to appease Turkey in exchange for its all-important ratification of its NATO membership application. But the road to such a blessing had already proved long and arduous – and in some cases even impossible. Ankara’s demands had grown from extradition requests of “Kurdish terrorists” in the name of Turkish national security to calling for Sweden to crack down on anti-Turkey protests in Stockholm and to fire a minister.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erodgan said Sweden could no longer count on Turkey's support in joining the military alliance.
Just 10 days prior to Paludan’s Koran-burning protest, Sweden had already seen its NATO bid almost scuppered after a group of Kurds had hung an effigy of Erdogan to a lamppost outside Stockholm’s City Hall.
Infuriated by the move, Ankara immediately cancelled a planned visit to Turkey by Sweden’s parliament speaker – a clear indication that diplomatic ties between the two countries had now hit a new low.
Sweden’s Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson called the protest an outright act of “sabotage against Sweden's NATO application”.
‘Sweden will be shocked’
Then came Paludan’s Koran-burning stunt, which prompted Erdogan to announce, for the first time, that his country may only greenlight Finland’s NATO application, leaving Sweden behind.
"If necessary, we can give a different response concerning Finland. Sweden will be shocked when we give a different response for Finland," Erdogan said.
On paper, however, the Koran-burning was nothing out of the ordinary for Paludan. The Islamophobic extremist had already staged several similar events in both Sweden and his home country Denmark in the past. However, there was something odd about the protest that did not sit quite right with outside observers. Firstly, it was the timing – it was clearly a particularly sensitive moment in Sweden's NATO application. Secondly, Paludan had travelled from Denmark to Sweden with the sole purpose of staging the event.
Finland’s former foreign minister Alexander Stubb immediately blamed it on Russia.
“This should come as no surprise. Russia seems to be behind the burning of the Quran [Koran] in Sweden. This is what hybrid warfare of a rogue state looks like. In today's world everything can be weaponised,” he tweeted.
Stubb’s successor, Pekka Haavisto, chimed in, telling Finnish broadcaster YLE that Paludan’s ties to Russia had “been investigated and certain connections in his vicinity have been found", but without giving any evidence of his claims.
Although Kristersson, the Swedish premier, did not comment on any such links, he said: “There are forces both within Sweden and outside who wish to hinder Sweden’s membership in NATO,” adding that: "It’s against that background we need to see the provocateurs who wish to worsen Sweden’s relations with other countries.”
‘How to fight back against liberalised, globalised West?’’
In the days leading up to the event, it emerged that the idea of burning a Koran outside the Turkish embassy had not even come from Paludan himself. Instead, he claimed he had been contacted by two Swedish far-right activists who had convinced him to do it, and that one of them, Chang Frick, had even paid for his demonstration permit.
Frick, who regularly does media spots for the far-right Sweden Democrats (SD), previously contributed to Ruptly, a subsidiary of the Russian state-owned media Russia Today. According to DN Frick has travelled to Russia on several occasions in recent years, and in 2017, he accompanied a fellow SD member who acted as an election observer in the Russian regional elections. During their visit, Frick claimed in a tweet to have met “real hotshots in Moscow”. When interviewed by a state-run broadcaster, he said that the elections had been carried out in a fair and just manner. “There’s nothing to criticise,” he said.
In a recent interview with DN, however, he said that: “I’ve never had anything to do with the Russian state in any way, and I’m deeply critical against what it is doing in Ukraine.”
The other man who was allegedly involved in organising the Koran-burning is an unnamed reporter who works for the far-right Swedish news website Exakt24. The website also has links to Russia, and its Editor-in-Chief, Erik Almqvist, has acted as an election observer there. In a video from a 2020 conference in Russia, Almqvist is seen asking Leonid Alutskij, the chairman of the Russian Duma’s Foreign Affairs Committee, how they could “together join our forces and fight back [against] the liberalised, globalised West".
'Secret methods'
Last week, just days before Turkey announced its decision on Sweden and Finland’s NATO applications, Swedish investigative programme Kalla Fakta (Cold Facts), revealed that Paludan too has Russian connections. According to the programme he has been connected to at least six people linked to the private Russian paramilitary Wagner Group via Russian social media network VKontakte. One of them is believed to be a recruiter and a senior member of the group, and has been accused by Ukraine of election meddling and influencing public opinion in favour of Russian interests in other countries.
When confronted with this evidence by Kalla Fakta, Paludan denied the claims. He called the findings “ridiculous” and accused the reporter of having set up a fake profile in his name.
“I would assume that the profile you have been checking isn’t my profile. It seems more like you might have cheated with this [the evidence] to create a VKontakte profile,” he retorted.
But whether Paludan was consciously influenced by his Russian contacts or not, experts say an overall Russian involvement cannot be ruled out.
“There’s reason to grow suspicious when events that have been set up so sophistically so clearly play into Russia’s hands,” Tony Ingesson, a senior lecturer in intelligence analysis at Lund University, told Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet, pointing to the logic that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”.
But, he added, “Russia uses secret methods so that people don’t realise they are being supported [in their acts]”.
Jorgen Holmlund, an expert in intelligence analysis at the Swedish Defence University, agreed.
“You can ask yourself why a Danish citizen travels here to work in a way that supports Russian interests,” he said. “Given what we already know about Russian election meddling, it’s not untoward for me to say that skillfully planted narratives to get others to act – consciously or not – are likely to be present here [in Sweden] as well”.
On Friday, Turkey made a fateful decision on Sweden’s NATO process that – at least in the near term – was definitely not helped by a Koran-burning protest in Stockholm.