The oversight of an official Swedish government dossier containing sensitive documents on negotiations with Turkey over Sweden‘s entry into NATO has unleashed a diplomatic scandal and political storm in Sweden, which in 2022 faced a tough negotiation process with Ankara to get the Turkish government to lift its veto on NATO membership because of Stockholm’s permissiveness towards the activities of terrorist groups such as the PKK on its territory.
According to recent reports in Turkish newspapers such as Hürriyet, the incident – now reported in the Swedish media – occurred after an important meeting between Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson and Turkish President Tayyip Erdoğan in November 2022. Information published by the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter – the country’s largest circulation daily – indicates that the dossier prepared for Kristersson and containing sensitive information on these negotiations was apparently forgotten at Arlanda International Airport (Stockholm) on his return to Sweden, where it was found in a bathroom by the airport’s cleaning staff.
It is not known how long the documents remained accessible to unauthorised persons, but the incident has sparked a public outcry in Sweden, where the prime minister’s office has confirmed the incident but tried to play it down by claiming that the documents did not contain information classified as “security-sensitive”. However, the newspaper Dagens Nyheter reports that the folder contained sensitive diplomatic notes not only on Turkish-Swedish relations, but also confidential material on relations with other countries that could have seriously compromised Sweden’s ties with those nations.
Tomas Thoren, a correspondent for Swedish public broadcaster SVT, described what happened as a major “blunder”, stressing that if the documents had come to light, it could have created a very serious vulnerability for national security. The daily Dagens Nyheter also insisted on this point, asserting that some of the information contained in the dossier was “classified” and not of public knowledge.
The diplomatic and political scandal has sparked an internal debate in Sweden, where despite the government’s explanations, critics denounce what happened as a serious breach of national security. The inadvertently forgotten dossier at Arlanda International Airport was apparently not the original, but a copy of the one that was to be given to Prime Minister Kristersson; but it contained data on bilateral relations, information on the issues to be discussed, and notes on the meeting and speeches. An anonymous source in the Swedish prime minister’s office attributed the error to an oversight due to work overload during the preparations for the negotiations with Turkey and the trip to Ankara.
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Edited and reviewed by:
Pablo Gómez is a specialist in Turkey and has been editor-in-chief of Hispanatolia since 2011. He has been analysing current affairs and geopolitics in Turkey and the surrounding region since 2006.
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