26.01.2023

Low stunts, high politics

In the run-up to the May elections, the provocations of anti-Muslim rightwingers have been a godsend for Erdoğan, writes Esen Uslu

A Danish rightwing activist, who has been infamous for his anti-Islamic stunts, burned a copy of the Qur’an, the holy book of Islam, in Stockholm in front of the Turkish embassy last weekend.

Rasmus Paludan is a self-declared ethno-nationalist, founder and leader of the far-right Stram Kurs (Hard Line) party since 2017. Before that he was a member of Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the Occident (Pegida) - a German-pan-European, anti-Islam political movement. By the way, one of its off-shoots, Pegida UK, was set up in 2016 by Tommy Robinson, the former leader of the English Defence League.

Paludan’s speciality is burning the Qur’an. In 2020 in Aarhus, Denmark’s second city, he was attacked during one of his stunts. His assailant was shot by the police. In April 2019 during another stunt in Viborg, a young Syrian hurled a rock at him, and was imprisoned and later deported. Paludan also burnt a copy of the Qur’an wrapped in bacon in Copenhagen, and called on his supporters to urinate to extinguish it, which led to violent clashes despite heavy police protection.

He also planned to burn the Qur’an in Malmö, Sweden in August 2020, but he was banned from entering the country for two years. However, as his father was a Swedish national, he has granted Swedish citizenship in October 2020, and in 2021 he was convicted for racism and defamation and given a suspended sentence and a fine.

In April 2022 he organised several demonstrations in Sweden and on each occasion he was met with counterdemonstrations - fights ensued with the police, who were trying to uphold his ‘right to free speech’. On January 21 this year he organised his demonstration in front of the Turkish embassy.

The practice of burning the Qur’an as a provocation was started in the US by Terry Jones in 2010, when his planned stunt produced a reaction from within the US establishment, starting with Hillary Clinton and David Petraeus, former commander of US forces in Afghanistan, and eventually Barack Obama and his defence secretary intervened. The event was cancelled, but the ball had started rolling.

In 2011 Jones and his supporters set up a ‘court’ to put the Qur’an ‘on trial’ and burnt a copy (in Afghanistan people demonstrating against this act were killed). He repeated this stunt in 2012, but his attempt to do it again in 2013 - this time with dozens of copies of the Qur’an - was prevented by him being arrested. He did, though, burn hundreds of them in 2014. During his stunts he has also set alight effigies of Barack Obama and Bill Clinton.

Luton

He was invited to give a speech in Luton at an English Defence League rally in February 2011, but he was banned from entering the UK. He has also been banned from entering Canada and Denmark.

The Stop Islamisation of Norway group (SIAN) under the leadership of Lars Thorsen has been burning the Qur’an at their rallies since 2019. In April 2022 SIAN organised a Qur’an‑burning event in Sandefjord, where hundreds of counter-demonstrators clashed with the police and were tear-gassed. According to a police spokesperson, “Basically, it is not a criminal offence to burn the Qur’an, and we therefore have no plans to intervene against it. Work is now being done to calm the mood.”

The Qur’an-burning, rightwing extremists in such countries are not just natives: there are a few migrants from Turkish and Muslim communities among them. In the US Terry Jones had sidekicks such as Ahmed Abaza, an Egyptian ex-Muslim, and a Texan imam, Mohamed El Hassan.

A renowned fiction writer, Akif Pirinççi, who emigrated from Turkey to Germany in 1969, has been one of the keynote speakers at Pegida rallies. His collection of political essays has been published in two volumes: Germany gone mad: the crazy cult around women, homosexuals, and immigrants (2014); and The big gayification: when men become women and women won’t become men (2015). They were also best-sellers in Germany. In an infamous speech in Dresden in 2015, he bemoaned the fact that there are no concentration camps any more - and was applauded by rightwing supporters of two extremist groups: Alternativ für Deutschland and Die Freiheit.

While we are talking about burning the Qur’an to incite provocations, we must also remember that the burning of the Qur’an is not specifically forbidden in Islam. In the 7th century, Caliph Uthman (one of the four ‘Rightly Guided Caliphs’) burned all Qur’an material written in dialects used by several Muslim tribes. (As the prophet Muhammad was unable to read and write, he recited his revelations and they were later transcribed by disciples.) And today in many Muslim countries, including Saudi Arabia, respectfully burning worn-out copies of the Qur’an is accepted as the correct way of disposing of them.

Paludan’s recent stunt has been a godsend for the government of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Trying to sit on the fence between the US and Russia, Turkey found the perfect excuse to refuse Sweden’s Nato membership bid outright. He was fully aware that without Sweden’s membership sorted, Finland would be unlikely to proceed alone.

Before the Qur’an-burning issue, Turkey had been attempting to delay Sweden’s bid by demanding quite impossible membership conditions. Sweden was prepared to jump through some hoops, but eventually the conditions - not least the extradition of political refugees, including naturalised Swedish citizens - were rejected.

Rightwing

But, following the actions of Rasmus Paludan et al, rightwing Islamists and nationalists were mobilised to march to the Swedish consulate, where they did some damage at the main gate. Other demonstrations followed. The consulate staff put on display a hand-written poster in the window stating that they did not condone the “action of an idiot”. But to no avail. Similarly, the Swedish prime minister’s apology was ignored.

With Turkey preparing for a too-close-to-call election on May 14, the government washed its hands of the Nato expansion negotiations. This has helped placate Russia, but sitting on the fence can be a nasty business. Now Erdoğan has to find ways to placate the US and Nato, especially if Turkey wants to maintain its rights over Aegean airspace against Greece.

The US seems prepared to supply 40 upgraded F-16s to Turkey, while at the same time providing Greece with a squadron of much more advanced F-35 stealth fighters. Since being booted out of the F-35 project, after buying Russian S-400 missiles, Turkey is desperate not to be left too far behind Greece when it comes to airforce tech. With the Biden administration eventually moving to initiate a $20 billion sale, Erdoğan does not want to rock the boat too much.

As for the Qur’an-burning, state department spokesperson Ned Price recently summarised the US take on Paludan’s actions:

The fact of the matter is this was, as I understand it, a private individual, a provocateur, someone who may have deliberately sought to put distance between two close partners of ours - Turkey and Sweden; who may have deliberately sought to have an impact on the ongoing discussion regarding the accession of Sweden and Finland to Nato.

Already there are voices raised within Nato to proceed either with that accession, disregarding Turkey’s opposition, or a rule change to allow the temporary suspension of member-states until their leaders have made policy changes.

In a July 2022 open letter, the leaders of US-based Turkish Democracy Project stated: “Nato members already know that, while Turkey does belong in Nato, Erdoğan does not. They must be prepared to work towards this goal.”

However, coming out against the current president just before elections could be counterproductive. So, as with many other issues, the accession question seems to have been put to one side until after the elections - unless some pressing development forces Nato’s hand, of course.