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A protest with an Erdogan doll at his feet in central Stockholm has sparked new tensions between Turkey and Sweden.

In response, the Turkish government summoned the Swedish ambassador and canceled a planned visit by Swedish parliament speaker Andreas Norlén to Ankara. Sweden’s path to NATO, which Turkey has been blocking for months, now has a new hurdle.

In response to Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, Sweden and Finland applied for NATO membership in May 2022. The process is currently still stalled due to a blockade by Turkey. In particular, Ankara accuses Sweden of not taking decisive action against people and groups that Ankara calls ‘terrorist’. Ankara repeatedly makes the same accusations against Germany and France, both NATO partners.

“The PKK and YPG are laying mines on Sweden’s path to NATO membership. It is now up to Sweden to clear these mines or deliberately step on them,” Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Thursday evening about the controversial action in Stockholm.

He blamed supporters of the outlawed Kurdish Workers’ Party PKK and the Syrian Kurdish militia YPG, which Ankara considers an offshoot of the PKK, for the incident, calling it “racist” and a “hate crime” on Friday.

The protest took place within sight of Stockholm City Hall. Photos posted on social media showed a doll resembling President Recep Tayyip Erdogan hanging there by his feet. Apparently behind it were activists from a Swedish organization that describes itself as “a network for solidarity and exchange with the revolutionary movement throughout Kurdistan”.

They wanted to bring Erdogan close to the fascist Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, whose body was hanged upside down in Milan in 1945. (aeg/sda/dpa)