Former Kurdish fighter key to survival of Swedish government

The Swedish government looked set to survive a no-confidence vote on Tuesday, with help from a lawmaker who has sought guarantees Sweden will support Kurds in Nothern Syria despite objections from Turkey which is blocking Sweden's bid to join NATO. Independent member of parliament Amineh Kakabaveh, who is of Iranian Kurdish descent, said she will abstain from voting on the motion brought by the centre-right opposition against Justice Minister Morgan Johansson over rising gang crime.

The Swedish government looked set to survive a no-confidence vote on Tuesday, with help from a lawmaker who has sought guarantees Sweden will support Kurds in Nothern Syria despite objections from Turkey which is blocking Sweden's bid to join NATO.

Independent member of parliament Amineh Kakabaveh, who is of Iranian Kurdish descent, said she will abstain from voting on the motion brought by the center-right opposition against Justice Minister Morgan Johansson over rising gang crime. Without Kakabaveh's vote, the no-confidence motion later on Tuesday is expected to win the support of only 174 members of parliament, one short of the 175 needed to pass.

"I've concluded that I will refrain from voting," Kakabaveh told public broadcaster SVT. Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson has said her Social Democrat minority government would resign if her minister was voted out.

The vote comes at a sensitive time in negotiations with Turkey, which has scuppered Sweden and Finland's hopes of quick accession to the NATO military alliance and of bolstering security in the wake of Russia's war in Ukraine. Turkey accuses both Nordic countries of harboring people linked to groups it deems terrorists.

Kakabaveh, herself a former Kurdish peshmerga fighter, told Reuters on Friday she would help the government if it affirmed that "we support the Kurds and people from those organizations coming to Sweden are not terrorists". Kakabaveh previously rescued Andersson in November when Sweden's first woman prime minister was forced to briefly resign after just one day in office.

Andersson promised then that Sweden would deepen its cooperation with the Syrian Democratic Union Party, a Kurdish group. Turkey considers the party to be part of the PKK, which Sweden designates as a terrorist organization. The PKK has been waging an insurgency in Turkey since 1984 in which more than 40,000 people have been killed.

Sweden disagrees that the Syrian party, or several other Kurdish groups, are part of the PKK. Andersson's Social Democrats at the time said it was "unacceptable" that sympathizers of the Syrian party be considered terrorists. "The deal which is from November last year is still valid," Social Democrat party secretary Tobias Baudin told news agency TT on Tuesday.

The Social Democrats did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Sweden is due to hold a general election in September.

Sweden's center-right opposition parties had sought to oust Johansson for failing to tackle gang crime that has led to a wave of shootings and murders in recent years.