Statement by Minister for Foreign Affairs Tobias Billström following fake execution

The Government understands Türkiye’s reaction, although it regrets that the Speaker of the Riksdag’s visit has been postponed. Relations with Türkiye are very important to Sweden.

Implementation of the memorandum continues.

We take an incredibly serious view of these events. Staging a fake execution of a democratically elected foreign leader is reprehensible in its own right, but especially in a country in which two leading politicians have been murdered.

In addition, the responsible organisation has explicitly stated that its purpose was to sabotage Sweden’s application for membership of NATO.

This shameless act now risks complicating and delaying the process that Sweden and its future NATO Ally Türkiye have begun, working step by step to build faith in each other so as to enable Türkiye to ratify Sweden’s NATO membership.

This act plays directly into the hands of Russia and weakens our country, and it happened during the most serious security situation since the Second World War. We cannot overemphasise the seriousness of this matter.