Kaplan resigned from the Cabinet after controversy regarding ties to Islamic extremism. He came under increasing pressure after local media published photos of him at a dinner with Turkish ultranationalists, including the Swedish head of the extremist Grey Wolves organisation, and a former leader of the main Turkish nationalist group in Sweden, who called on Turks to kill Armenians.[2]
On 1 July 2014, in a Fight Racism Now seminar held in Visby, Kaplan compared the young Muslims from Sweden who went to fight for any force in the Syrian civil war (including the Islamic State) with those Swedes who volunteered to fight for Finland against Russia in the Winter War during the Second World War. Kaplan commented that his statements had been misrepresented, but admitted to having chosen his words poorly.[9]
In a Turkish newspaper interview, Kaplan said that it is natural for Sweden to recognize Palestine as a state, and that the "occupied territories will, if Allah willing, be freed, and east Jerusalem will become the capital of Palestine." Further he said that Israel will be forced to a peace agreement.[10]
In April 2016 Kaplan received criticism because he had connections to extreme Islamists in Turkey.[11] In particular he met the Swedish leader Ilhan Sentürk of the Turkish nationalist group the Grey Wolves and Barbaros Leylani, deputy chair of the National Turkish Association in Sweden, who said a few days earlier that "those Armenian dogs must die", or, that Turks must "kill the Armenian dogs,"[3] in Sergels torg, and on several occasions with people from the Islamist organization Millî Görüş.[12][13]
On 17 April, Svenska Dagbladet published a video on which Kaplan compares Israel's treatment of Palestinians to Nazi Germany's treatment of Jewish people.[14] On 18 April the Swedish national public TV broadcaster SVT reported about Kaplan having close ties with the Turkish regime of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and that this was a part of a Turkish strategy to influence foreign governments.[15] The two journalists from SVT said they had been researching Kaplan's connection with the Turkish AKP party for months and published some of their material prematurely when the affair suddenly exploded in the media.[16] These cases raised questions in Sweden about the stance of Kaplan concerning extremism.[17] On 18 April 2016, Kaplan resigned as cabinet minister.[18] Several additional controversies with connections to Islamism in the Green Party occurred in the week following Kaplan's resignation which SVT's commentator called one of the party's worst crisis ever.[19][20]
^Larsson, Göran (2014). Islam och muslimer i Sverige : en kunskapsöversikt. Sverige. Nämnden för statligt stöd till trossamfund. Bromma: Nämnden för statligt stöd till trossamfund. p. 93. ISBN9789198061161. OCLC941538793.
