SWEDEN – An Kurdish from Rojhilat (Iran) MP is at the centre of a deepening row over Sweden’s bid to join Nato could decide the fate of the government in a no-confidence vote today. The country’s parliament will hold the vote after a motion was submitted by the far-right Sweden Democrats on Friday. The vote seeks to oust Justice Minister Morgan Johansson over his handling of gang crime in the Scandinavian country, but Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson has vowed to resign if Mr Johansson is forced out.
However, since the parliament is equally divided, with 174 for and against, the casting vote could fall to left-wing Iranian-Kurdish MP and former guerilla Amineh Kakabaveh. She has found herself at the centre of Sweden’s bid to join Nato, which is being blocked by Turkey.
Ankara insists that Ms Kakabaveh is a terrorist and supporter of the banned Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and has demanded her extradition as a condition of support for Stockholm’s membership of the Western military alliance. But she has never been a citizen of Turkey and, while in Iran, was a member of the Marxist Komala Party, not the PKK. Though Ms Kakabaveh was elected to parliament as a member of Sweden’s anti-Nato Left Party in 2008, she later resigned and now sits as an independent.
She remains opposed to the military alliance due in part to her own experiences of war, saying: “Nato has never brought safety to the world.” The Kurdish politician says she has never been in an open fight against Turkey but in “a democratic fight for human rights and women’s rights.”
Her vote depends on the Swedish government upholding its agreement to expand relations with the Syrian Democratic Union Party (PYD), which Ankara deems a terrorist offshoot of the PKK.
“As long as our agreement holds, I will not support a motion of no confidence,” Ms Kakabaveh said recently. “I’m awaiting an answer.”
She has been critical of Sweden’s rush to abandon 200 years of neutrality in response to the war in Ukraine, a position supported by Social Democrat leaders in spite of conference motions reaffirming opposition to joining NATO.
“If you want to sell everything for NATO membership, then go ahead, but I think it’s awful,” Ms Kakabaveh said. ”It’s awful that everything depends on NATO membership, rushing it through and undermining democracy.”
