Turkey cancels the visit of the Swedish Defense Minister

Turkey canceled Swedish Defense Minister Pal Johnson’s visit scheduled for January 27. The reason for this is that the Swedish authorities have agreed to a protest event planned today near the Turkish Embassy in Stockholm, where a Koran will be burned.

Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar said Johnson’s visit to Turkey had become meaningless, so it was cancelled. It was unacceptable to do nothing about this protest. Action should have been taken.”

Johnson downplayed the cancellation of his visit. “Yesterday I met my Turkish colleague Hulusi Akar at the US military airport in Ramstein, Germany,” he wrote on Twitter on Saturday. “We decided to postpone the planned meeting in Ankara to a later date,” he added.

The Swedish defense minister was in Ankara to discuss Sweden’s attempt to join NATO after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Turkey, a member of the coalition, has been blocking Sweden’s accession for months. One of the conditions it demands is that the country should not tolerate people Ankara considers terrorists, but rather that it should extradite them. Sweden denies harboring extremists.