Stockholm: When the Turkish president raises his voice against “terrorists” in the Swedish parliament, Amineh Kakabawe is convinced he is talking about them.
The former Kurdish rebel fighter-turned-Swedish parliamentarian has emerged as a central figure in the drama surrounding Sweden and Finland’s historic bid to join NATO. Turkey opposes NATO membership for the two Nordic countries, accusing them of harboring Kurdish terrorists.
Kakabwe, a strong advocate for Kurdish self-determination in the Middle East and a fierce critic of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, holds extraordinary advantage as the Swedish government relies on his vote for its one-seat majority in parliament.
“He can’t judge us,” she says of Erdogan. “I stand for the values of Sweden and the sovereignty of Sweden.”
Despite a long history of non-alignment, Sweden and Finland rushed to apply for NATO membership following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but were stunned by Erdogan’s opposition.
In order to allow the Nordic countries into NATO, a decision that requires consensus among coalition members, Turkey demanded that they lift the arms embargo on Turkey, extradite alleged Kurdish militants and transfer Kurdish fighters to Syria. stop supporting. Turkey says those fighters are linked to the PKK, a domestic Kurdish group that Ankara and the West consider a terrorist organization.
In any case, it would have been difficult for the Swedes and the Finns to meet those demands, but with the Swedish government relying on Kavikabeh’s support for its existence, there is little room for compromise.
“We are not used to single members of parliament having this kind of influence,” says Svante Cornell, director of the Institute for Security and Development Policy in Stockholm. “It is the maximum misfortune on the side of the government, you might say.”
Kakabawe’s support allowed Social Democratic leader Magdalena Andersen to become Sweden’s first female prime minister last year. In return, the centre-left Social Democrats agreed to deepen cooperation with the Kurdish authorities in northern Syria.
The minority government survived a no-confidence vote last week thanks to Kakabwe and will need its support again on Wednesday to move its spring budget proposal through parliament.
Kakabwe, an independent lawmaker, says she has not yet decided how to vote and is waiting for the government to show her plans on issues close to her heart, including women in immigrant communities and Efforts to fight respect based violence and harassment against girls are included. How will it deal with Turkish demands?
“I don’t want them to hold back,” she says.
The unusual situation has raised Kakabwe’s political profile in Sweden and internationally. It has also exposed her criticism that she is holding Sweden’s NATO bid hostage to advance her own agenda. Kakabwe says he has received threats from both Turkish nationalists and Sweden’s far-right.
“It’s a terrible situation,” says 48-year-old Kakabawe. “But I don’t want to sit in a corner and say, ‘I’m scared.’ I gave up my family, my childhood, whatever I had so that I could stand up for what I believed in.”
Growing up in a poor Kurdish household in western Iran, Kakabawe says she was just 14 in the late 1980s when she joined the Peshmerga fighters rebelling against the Khomeini regime.