Turkey’s arrests of an American pastor and other Western citizens have thrust its troubled judicial system to the forefront of ties with allies, reinforcing suspicions that the Turkish government is using detainees as diplomatic leverage.

Turkey scoffs at the idea that it treats detained foreigners as foreign policy pawns, and points the finger at the U.S. for cases against Turks in American courts. Turkey’s top appeals court judge weighed in this week, saying only “independent” courts can free pastor Andrew Brunson.

The reality is more complex in a nation where President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has tightened his grip on the state, including a judiciary purged of thousands of judges and prosecutors after an attempted coup in 2016. Constitutional changes have since expanded Erdogan’s control of judicial appointments, undermining Turkey’s avowals that it wants to mold impartial courts.

There is no evidence that jailed foreigners in Turkey were arrested to be used as “hostages,” and Erdogan could genuinely believe they were acting on behalf of foreign governments against Turkey, said Nicholas Danforth, an analyst at the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington.

“In taking and holding prisoners to combat the West’s presumed hostility, Ankara ends up creating the kind of hostility it imagines,” Danforth wrote in a blog post last week.

Recent Turkish court rulings seemed to align with diplomatic outreach to Europe. Two Greek soldiers held for months were freed; Taner Kilic, an Amnesty International representative, was released; and a judge lifted a travel ban on a German of Turkish descent accused of terror offenses.

Conversely, the courts ruled against freeing Brunson, who is accused of links to Kurdish rebels and the 2016 coup plotters, after U.S. economic penalties deepened the Turkish currency’s slide.

A coincidence? Some analysts don’t think so.

“As the crisis with the U.S. heated up and as the economic crisis heated up, Erdogan saw a need to speed up the process of normalization with Europe,” said Howard Eissenstat, an associate professor of Middle East history in Canton, New York.

Eissenstat, also a fellow at the Washington-based Project on Middle East Democracy, speculated that President Donald Trump’s focus on freeing Brunson had backfired, encouraging Turkish officials to think: “‘This guy’s really valuable and we can get a lot for him.'”

For Turkey, “a lot” would be the extradition of Fethullah Gulen, a Muslim cleric who lives in Pennsylvania and denies Turkish allegations that he engineered the coup attempt, which killed nearly 300 people.

Turkey has also criticized the case against Mehmet Hakan Atilla, an official at Turkey’s state-controlled Halkbank who was jailed in the U.S. for helping Iran avoid American sanctions.

Last year, Erdogan floated a possible trade in which the U.S. sends Gulen to Turkey in exchange for the release of Brunson, now under house arrest in the city of Izmir. However, comments on Monday by Ismail Rustu Cirit, the Turkish judge, reflected an official view that Turkey’s sovereignty in the matter is paramount.

“The only and absolute power that can rule on the arrest of a foreign citizen in Izmir and decisions about his trial are the independent and impartial courts,” Cirit said.

The European Union has urged Turkey to guarantee the impartiality of its courts, a key requirement in an EU candidacy bid that stalled years ago.

Judicial reforms more than a decade ago, in the early years of Erdogan’s rule, reduced the power of the military and moved Turkey closer to European standards. But backsliding followed, amid increasing accusations that the ruling party was using the courts to muzzle opponents.

In another twist, internal conflict erupted at the end of 2013 when prosecutors launched an investigation of alleged corruption at the top of the government, a move described by Erdogan’s camp as a power grab by Gulen supporters.

Detainees remain an irritant between Germany and Turkey, which freed Die Welt journalist Deniz Yucel and activist Peter Steudtner. But Turkey still holds a number of Germans for what Berlin considers political reasons.

Turkey, meanwhile, has bemoaned a Greek court’s decision to grant asylum to some servicemen who fled to Greece a day after Turkey’s coup attempt. In a reverse scenario, Turkey would never “shelter” coup plotters acting against Greece, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said.

Turkey doesn’t have “very much” to show for what may be opportunistic attempts to use detainees as leverage with other countries, according to Eissenstat.

He said there could be a parallel with similar cases in Iran or the former Soviet Union, in which “local officials would sometimes make decisions and then the central government would decide, ‘OK, how does this fit into a larger policy?'”
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Former British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson has compared Prime Minister Theresa May’s plan for Brexit to putting the country’s constitution in a “suicide vest” and handing the detonator to the European Union.

The attack, and Johnson’s choice of language, widened the divide in the governing Conservative Party over Brexit.

Johnson, a strong supporter of Brexit, quit May’s government in July after rejecting her proposal for close economic ties with the bloc after the U.K. leaves next year. His article in the Mail on Sunday ramped up speculation that he plans to challenge her leadership.

But some Conservative colleagues condemned his language.

Foreign Office Minister Alan Duncan tweeted that the comments marked “one of the most disgusting moments in modern British politics” and should be “the political end of Boris Johnson.”
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Voters in Sweden went to the polls Sunday for a parliamentary election that could change the Scandinavian country’s reputation for being a liberal stronghold.

The anti-immigration Sweden Democrats, who want the country to leave the European Union and put a freeze on immigration, are hoping to become the country’s largest party.

Sweden Democrats leader Jimmie Akesson told voters Saturday there needs to be “tight, responsible” immigration policies to help create “breathing space” in Sweden.

At a rally Saturday, Prime Minister Stefan Lofven warned, “The haters are mobilizing in Sweden and are egging on people against people. … We will resist. We will stand up for equality.”

Sweden, like most of Europe, has been hit by an influx of asylum-seekers, who are fleeing mainly from the Middle East, South Asia and Africa.  

The influx of 163,000 asylum-seekers in Sweden in 2015 has polarized voters and fractured a cozy political consensus.  

Pollsters say the growing popularity of the Sweden Democrats, a party with roots in the neo-Nazi fringe, could result in  the far-right group winning veto power over which parties form the next government.

Magnus Blomgren a social scientist at Umea University, says, “Traditional parties have failed to respond to the sense of discontent that exists.”
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Swedes vote on Sunday in a tight election dominated by fears about asylum and welfare, with the populist, anti-immigration Sweden Democrats vying to become the biggest party in a country long seen as a bastion of economic stability and liberal values.

Far-right parties have made spectacular gains throughout Europe in recent years following a refugee crisis sparked by civil war in Syria and conflicts in Afghanistan and parts of Africa.

In Sweden, the influx of 163,000 asylum seekers in 2015 has polarized voters, fractured the cozy political consensus and could give the Sweden Democrats, a party with roots in the neo-Nazi fringe, a veto over which parties form the next government.

‘Sense of discontent’

“Traditional parties have failed to respond to the sense of discontent that exists,” Magnus Blomgren, a social scientist at Umea University. “That discontent maybe isn’t directly related to unemployment or the economy, but simply a loss of faith in the political system. Sweden isn’t alone in this.”

The center-left bloc, uniting the minority governing Social Democrat and Green parties with the Left Party, is backed by about 40 percent of voters, recent opinion polls indicate, with a slim lead over the center-right Alliance bloc.

The Sweden Democrats, who want the country to leave the European Union and put a freeze on immigration, have about 17 percent support, up from the 13 percent they scored in the 2014 vote, opinion polls suggest.

But their support was widely underestimated before the last election and some online surveys give them as much as 25 percent support, a result that would most likely make them the biggest party, dethroning the Social Democrats for the first time in a century.

That could weaken the Swedish crown in the short term, but analysts do not see any long-term effect on markets from the election as economic growth is strong, government coffers are well-stocked and there is broad agreement about the thrust of economic policy.

Euroskeptic voices

Sweden has flirted with populism before. New Democracy, founded by an aristocrat and a record producer, won nearly 7 percent of the vote in 1991 promising strict immigration policies, cheaper alcohol and free parking, before crashing out of parliament only three years later.

But if the Sweden Democrats get a quarter of the vote, it would be a sensation in a country described as a “humanitarian superpower” by then-Moderate Party Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt in 2014.

It would also make them the biggest populist party in the Nordic region, topping the Danish People’s Party, which got 21 percent support in 2015, and trump the 12.6 percent for the far-right Alternative for Germany, which swept into the Bundestag in 2017.

With an eye on the European Parliament elections next year, Brussels policymakers are watching the vote in Sweden closely, concerned that a nation with impeccable democratic credentials could add to the growing chorus of euroskepticism in the EU.

Sweden took in more asylum seekers per capita than any other country in Europe in 2015, magnifying worries about a welfare system that many voters already believe is in crisis.

Lengthening queues for critical operations, shortages of doctors and teachers, and a police service that has failed to deal with inner-city gang violence have shaken faith in the “Swedish model,” built on a promise of comprehensive welfare and social inclusion.

Akesson’s objectives

Sweden Democrat leader Jimmie Akesson has labeled the vote a choice between immigration and welfare.

He has also promised to sink any government that refuses to give his party a say in policy, particularly on immigration.

Mainstream politicians have so far rebuffed him. But with some kind of cooperation between parties in the center-left and center-right blocs the only other alternative out of the current political deadlock, analysts believe Akesson may yet end up with some influence on policy.

With both options unpalatable to the traditional players, forming a government could take weeks.

Polling stations open at 8 a.m. (0600 GMT) and close at 8 p.m. (1800 GMT), with exit polls set be published by Sweden’s two main broadcasters around that time. Results from the vote count will become clear later in the evening.
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Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras on Saturday unveiled plans for tax cuts and pledged spending to heal years of painful austerity, less than a month after Greece emerged from a bailout program financed by its European Union partners and the International Monetary Fund.

Tsipras, who faces elections in about a year, used a keynote policy speech in the northern city of Thessaloniki to announce a spending spree that he said would help fix the ills of years of belt-tightening and help boost growth.

But he said Athens was also committed to sticking to the fiscal targets pledged to lenders.

“We will not allow Greece to revert to the era of deficits and fiscal derailment,” he told an audience of officials, diplomats and businessmen.

Tsipras promised a phased reduction of the corporate tax to 25 percent from 29 percent from next year, as well as an average 30 percent reduction in a deeply unpopular annual property tax on homeowners, rising to 50 percent for low earners.

He also said a pledge to maintain a primary budget surplus at the equivalent of 3.5 percent of gross domestic product could be achieved without further pension cuts, and that he would discuss this with the European Commission.

The government had been expected to announce further pension cuts next year — a deeply controversial measure in a country where high unemployment means that pensioners are occasionally the primary family earners. It is also a group that has been targeted for cutbacks more than a dozen times since 2010.

The leftist premier said he would also reinstate labor rights and increase the minimum wage. And he said the state would either reduce or subsidize social security contributions for certain sections of the workforce.
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