Ragip Zarakolu has been a long-time adversary of the Turkish state. The 74-year-old was summoned before the court for the first time after the military coup of 1971, because of his links with Amnesty International.
Zarakolu went on to co-found the Turkish Human Rights Association and work as a publisher, publishing books on the Armenian genocide and the Kurdish crisis.
He is currently on a list of 40 suspected “terrorists” whose extradition Turkey has made contingent on Finland and Sweden agreeing to join NATO. The Zarakolu case demonstrates why Turkey has been unable to persuade the West to accept its demands thus far.
On Wednesday, Finnish and Swedish negotiators met with Turkish government officials in Ankara for the first time to discuss the NATO dispute. The Turkish presidential office’s spokesman and adviser to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Ibrahim Kalin, then spoke about the two northern European countries’ favourable response to Turkey’s proposal to break the arms embargo, which had been in effect since 2019.
Turkey, on the other hand, is not satisfied with this. She wants proof from Helsinki and Stockholm that they are separating themselves from the PKK, the Kurdish Workers’ Party, which is a terrorist group. They also demand that Turkish government opponents be extradited.
Zarakolu has spent ten years in Sweden.
According to Ankara, the 28 people on the Turkish list in Sweden and the twelve in Finland are dangerous enemies of the state linked to the PKK, left-wing extremist organisations, or the Fethullah Gülen movement.
Turkey does not want to hear excuses such allusions to EU rules, according to Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, who spoke to the Habertürk news station. Even if Finland and Sweden have to amend their laws to allow the extraditions, Turkey’s demands must be granted.
Ragip Zarakolu (seen here in 2008) has been accused by the Turkish side of supporting a violent coup.
Zarakolu is keeping an eye on the situation from Sweden, where he has stayed for nearly ten years. He told exile radio station zgürüz-Radyo that he does not believe he would be extradited.
In 2019, Sweden’s top court rejected his extradition request. In Sweden, unlike Turkey, the government is bound by the decisions of the courts, according to Zarakolu. Ankara most likely believes that the Swedish government may behave in the same way that the Turkish government does in its own country: by exerting pressure on the judiciary to carry out its agenda.
New investigations began two years ago.
The Zarakolu case demonstrates how widely European governments and Turkey differ in their legal interpretations. In Turkey, the human rights activist should not be imprisoned for committing or advocating violence.
He was found guilty of giving a lecture at a legitimate Kurdish party. He was found guilty of assisting a terrorist organization by the Turkish judiciary.
The Turkish public prosecutor’s office opened additional investigations into him two years ago: Zarakolu suggested parallels between Erdogan and former Prime Minister Adnan Menderes, who was executed during a military coup in 1961, in an article for the left-wing daily “Evrensel.” With the piece, prosecutors accused Zarakolu of advocating a violent overthrow.
Zarakolu stated in the interview that there was no legal foundation for extradition; nevertheless, Erdogan adviser Kalin stated the exact opposite following the negotiations in Ankara on Wednesday: there was no legal basis for refusing to extradite the “terrorists.”
There is also one person who has passed away on the list.
Bülent Kenes, the former editor-in-chief of a Gülen-affiliated daily, is also on Turkey’s extradition list. He is suspected of being a part of the 2016 coup attempt. Another government critic, Mehmet Sirac Bilgin, a Kurdish politician and journalist, is on Turkey’s extradition list but has been dead for seven years.
The list might be used as a bargaining chip in negotiations, with Ankara willing to part with it in exchange for concessions. The lifting of the European Union’s arms embargo is more vital for Turkey. Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson of Sweden has stated unequivocally that her country does not transfer weapons or money to terrorist organizations.
Sweden is accused by Turkey of aiding the PKK-affiliated YPG militia in Syria.
Due to Erdogan’s threat of veto, Finland and Sweden, who are seeking NATO security as a result of Russia’s war against Ukraine, are unable to join NATO peacefully.
Turkey’s allies have shown a lack of understanding. At a security conference in Istanbul, Germany’s ambassador to Turkey, Jürgen Schulz, stated that the issue benefited only Russia. The chairman of the Munich Security Conference, Christoph Heusgen, stated during the event that Turkey would be considerably better equipped to resolve its difficulties with Finland and Sweden once they joined NATO than before.