University apologises to Turkish student denied internship

Sweden’s Stockholm University has apologised after a professor told a Turkish student, who asked him for a summer internship, that he could not accept her application due to Turkey’s reluctance to ratify Sweden’s North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) membership, reports The Local.

The student, who is based at a university in Istanbul, applied for the summer internship in November last year. “We would love to host you. However, since Turkey does not allow Sweden to join NATO, I have to decline. Sorry!” the professor replied in an email sent on 23 November, first reported by Turkish media.

The woman then submitted a formal discrimination complaint to the university. There is no general rule that Swedish universities do not accept Turkish students, and a university spokesperson told Swedish public broadcaster SVT that they had apologised to the woman, calling the response she was given “unacceptable”.
Full report on The Local site