STOCKHOLM & UPPSALA, Sweden — Sweden’s bid to join the NATO alliance following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Turkey’s threats to block it have thrust this Nordic nation’s Kurdish minority center stage in a Netflix style drama that is rocking the government of Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson and prompting anguished debate over Swedish identity.

On June 7, Andersson and her minority government of Social Democrats faced a no-confidence vote in parliament over the Justice Minister’s failure to curb record levels of gang violence, pushed by a right-wing opposition that smells blood ahead of nationwide elections in September. Its fate seemingly hinged on the decision of Amineh Kakabaveh, an ethnic Kurdish lawmaker and former guerrilla whose swing vote has allowed the government to pass key legislation, notably the budget. Kakabaveh, an independent, lent that support on the condition that the Social Democrats grant their own to the Kurdish-led autonomous administration in northeast Syria.

Turkey deems the body a threat to its own national security. It cites the fact that many of its top cadres were previously active in the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), the armed group that has been fighting the Turkish army since 1984 for Kurdish self-rule. Turkey is now threatening to launch a fresh military offensive against the US-backed Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), who led the fight against the Islamic State (IS), on similar grounds.

The controversial deal sealed between the Social Democrats and Kakabaveh in November last year infuriated Turkey and bolstered its demands that Sweden end its alleged support for Kurdish “terrorists” as a pre-condition for greenlighting Sweden’s accession to NATO. Turkey’s ambassador to Sweden suggested that Kakabaveh, who makes no secret of her sympathy for the PKK, should be extradited to Turkey before discovering she was a Kurd from Iran, not Turkey.