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NATO: Turkey urges 'concrete steps' from Sweden, Finland

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Everyone please read Desert Tortoise on Turkey. I couldn't say it better myself. Brilliant incisive analyses.

The most dangerous and cunning dictator in the world at this moment is not Putin, or even Nth Korea's Kim Jong-un. China's leader Xi Jinping and Erdogan are. Putin's insanely irrational Ukraine folly will be Putin and Russia's downfall. It will make them weaker.

Erdogan and Xi Jinping are sitting, waiting on Russia to get weaker, before they will each, in their own way, for their own reasons and independently move on Russia's influence in different locations. Turkey wants influence in the "Stan" country's, round the back of the Black Sea; Europe and Syria,and Europe (etc, etc, etc, etc). China may expose a hidden interest on some Russian interests if Russia are weakened. Neither Erdogan or Xi give two hoots about Russia. Empire-builders only ever care about their own empires.

2 ( +2 / -0 )

Turkey and Russia were also recently on opposite sides of the 2020 war between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh. There is still contention there as the Turks and Azeris try to force open a corridor through Armenia to connect Turkey with Iran and the Turkic speaking nations to the east. Read up on the Zangezur Corridor, which if implemented would connect Turkey through Armenia to Iran and the Turkic speaking countries to the east thus in the mind of Mr. Erdogan "unifying" the Turkic speaking nations. This is an ardent desire of Mr. Erdogan as he sees himself as a sort of a leader of the Turkic speaking world, not that the other nations see him that way. Meanwhile Russia has bases in Armenia and has an interest in keeping it whole.

3 ( +3 / -0 )

Turkey behaves like a Russian colony or satellite

Not really. Turkey and Russia are seriously butting heads in Syria and up until Russia invaded Ukraine, there was an increasing possibility of Russian and Turkish forces engaging in direct combat. Mr. Erdogan seems to be trying to recreate some degree of an Ottoman empire. He has been trying to get the five majority Muslim former Soviet SSRs into a sort of Turkish led economic union to pull them away from both Russian and Chinese influence. Turkish forces and their Syrian jihadi mercenaries fought horrific pitched battles with Russian Wagner pukes and their own Syrian government aligned allies in Libya. Turkey competes for influence with the Saudis and to a lesser degree Iran in the Muslim world. In effect they are trying to crowd the Russians out of the picture in the region.

The thing with Turkey is that Mr. Erdogan is an Islamist through and through. He considers western values and the Christian religion to be Turkey's enemies. Mr. Erdogan tries to play everyone against everyone else for Turkey's benefit, trying to pry concessions from every important nation but all he has managed to do over the years is alienate former friends and turn them against Turkey. The whole reason Mr. Erdogan bought those S-400 systems was because he demanded technical transfer and co-production as the price of selling a missile system to Turkey. Raytheon, the maker of Patriot flatly refused. Raytheon refuses to share tech data with the US military, they are not going to share with the Turks. The Russians made vague promises of tech cooperation but now have backed out. Negotiations for the 2nd lot of S400s have stalled for two years over Russian refusals to provide tech transfer and co-production. Now it appears Mr. Erdogan is going to alienate NATO over demands of Sweden and Finland that they will never consent to.

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Turkey behaves like a Russian colony or satellite. Maybe NATO isn’t for them.

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Turkey is contributing 1.6% of their GDP to NATO instead of the 2% they’re supposed to pay. Maybe countries that aren’t paying their fair share shouldn’t be allowed to vote.

Turkey like they always do is just trying to see what they can get out of us to buy their support. Maybe it made sense 30 years ago for them to be in NATO but not anymore. It's like having Iran and China on the human rights council.

7 ( +7 / -0 )

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