The Swedish socialist newspaper Flamman has launched a competition for satirical drawings of Erdogan to protest against the Turkish president’s policies: “Erdogan is trying to pressure Sweden to deport Kurds and restrict freedom of expression. Flamman therefore initiates a satirical drawing competition with a prize sum of SEK 10,000 (€ 1,000). The best works will be published in the magazine. Send your contribution to [email protected].”

Flamman editor-in-chief Leonidas Aretakis wrote in his column that the competition should serve freedom of expression and support Kurds: " After the heinous triple murder at a Kurdish cultural center in Paris, the Kurdish minority is rightly in despair. In an interview with Flamman’s foreign editor Jonas Elvander, the association’s foreign affairs spokesperson, Berivan Firat, said that Turkey’s persecution makes Kurdish lives insecure throughout Europe, and that Sweden is undermining its democracy by selling out the Kurds to Erdogan.”

“All defenders of Kurdish rights, democratic development in Turkey and Swedish freedom of speech, now need to gather in protest. Sweden should immediately cancel the entry into NATO, which was wrongheaded from the beginning. A process that was supposed to increase our security has, on the contrary, put us in the lap of a power-hungry autocrat who wants to dictate Swedish legislation. This is precisely what the left warned would happen last Spring, when the Nato process was initiated by the Social Democratic government, wrote Aretakis.

“Now I welcome everyone, professionals and amateurs, to participate in Flamman’s satire competition. The prize sum is SEK 10,000 (€ 1,000) and the best contributions are published in the newspaper. Send us your interpretation of the Turkish autocrat to [email protected] on January 20 the latest.”