Erdogan has won the election with 52% of the vote, with a voter turnout of 85%, winning five more years as president.
Naked Capitalism's diagnosis of Kilicdaroglu's failure is that he had to somehow simultaneously keep pro-KPDP voters on board and also attract voters of nationalist candidates from the first round, and was unable to square that circle.
Erdogan's party has lost seats in the parliament as nationalist parties have outflanked him on refugee issues - and even Kilicdaroglu couldn't seem to move against that tide, as he called for the urgent expulsion of 10 million refugees. The Nationalist Movement Party is now at 10.4% in the parliament, a party with ties to the Grey Wolves. Far right parties got more than 30% of the parliamentary vote. The left was unable to capture enough voters who have suffered in the economic crisis, with inflation rates have sharply risen far above even Europe's, and these voters instead went down the "blame my problems on refugees" path.
As a silver lining to this shitstain, this does at least mean that any hopes by NATO that Turkey will move towards the West more are probably dashed. This isn't to say that Erdogan will scorn the West - far from it, in fact, he let Finland in to NATO and will probably let Sweden in - but the :both-sides: strategy will continue, for better and worse, and if you aren't with the West, then you are against them.
Here is the map of the Ukraine conflict, courtesy of Wikipedia.
Here is the archive of important pieces of analysis from throughout the war that we've collected.
This week's first update is here in the comments.
This week's second update is here in the comments.
This week's third update is here in the comments.
Links and Stuff
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Add to the above list if you can, thank you.
Resources For Understanding The War Beyond The Bulletins
Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map. I recommend their map more than the channel at this point, as an increasing subscriber count has greatly diminished their quality.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have decent analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: neo-conservative sources but their reporting of the war (so far) seems to line up with reality better than most liberal sources. Beware of chuddery.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don't want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it's just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent journalist reporting in the warzone.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Telegram Channels
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
Pro-Russian
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR's former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR's forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist (but still quite reactionary in terms of gender and sexuality and race, so beware). If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster's telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ Another big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia's army.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a 'propaganda tax', if you don't believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine
Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.
Last week's discussion post.
After five consecutive snap elections in Bulgaria, our two biggest political parties (which are generally mortal enemies) decides to form an explicitly "pro-Western" coalition... or at least they were going to...
A member of one of the two parties leaked an audio recording of a meeting where the party leaders discuss plans to fire almost all high ranking administrative officials and replace them with "people handpicked by the embassy" ( we all know which one).
We are likely going to a 6th snap election, however this time with the only two pro-US parties tanking in the polls :chefs-kiss:
https://web.archive.org/web/20230529180323/https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-05-27/bulgarian-government-deal-hits-the-rocks-over-leaked-wiretaps
This feels like a really big deal and I’m surprised I don’t hear more about it. Of course western media will never even mention it, but even among anti-imperialist sources this is the first I’ve heard. This feels bigger than that infamous Victoria Nuland Ukraine call back in 2014/15. “Embassy” seems obvious to the point it would strain credulity to say it refers to anything other than the US (maybe an EU country I guess) embassy. This is (further) evidence of US/EU meddling in other countries.
i also just heard of this , this and the apartment building Story , its really ominus.. Should be way bigger news , what a dark time .. how has this dark empre so many willfull sevants ?
With the far-right transphobic shit heads gaining the most ground, because they're also pro-Putin.
imo far-right parties are also too divided to form a coalition so whatever little protection we have over LBTQ people should be safe. It will be terrible optics for the "Socialists" to ally with Revival even if they have identical policies.
I think we are gonna keep up the snap elections until 2026/2027 when the president steps down and forms his own party, since he is the only one with decent approval ratings.
As much as BadEmpanada annoys me, someone sent me a video of him criticizing Vaush that made me laugh. The guy always projects himself as a geopolitical genius against the "red fash" and he seriously thought Portugal was part of South America and didn't even know Kosovo existed before defending it because NATO. Just shows that getting radicalized by Twitch streamers is one thing, but continuing to take them seriously after the radicalization has already begun will ultimately lead you nowhere.
Croatian president Zoran Milanovic, talked today at the local parliament of the capital city of Zagreb, when he was interrupted mid sentence by someone yelling "Slava Ukraini! Slava to Croatia!".
His response was pretty funny: "Yeah, sure, OK..." dismissing him as some lunatic. Later he added "Slava Ukraini" is the same as Croatian Nazi slogan, or German "Sieg Heil" and that hundreds of thousands of people were genocided under the "Slava Ukraini" slogan. This, of course, prompted the (absolutely despicable in every way) Croatian prime minister to call him a Russian shill.
Was pretty surprised the president who is (while mostly ceremonial figure) also the supreme military commander of a NATO country, to be that blunt about it.
Mexico has now formally recognized Palestine as a sovereign state. As of June 1st, the so-called "Special Delegation" to Palestine has ended and has been replaced with an "Embassy of the State of Palestine"
AMLO continuing to be based is really an awesome sign, especially with an increasingly erratic and aggressive USA looming
My wife just brought out a ukrainian ssr flag because she "made up her mind about the war".
Intel Slava Z is saying after the missile attack on the UA intelligence center recently, another star was added to the CIA memorial wall. If true that's fucking hilarious but I can't find anything else
:kim: North Korea has launched their satellite. South Korea and Japan are currently shitting themselves and fear mongering about it being a missile.
Update: North Korea says the rocket's second stage malfunctioned :sadness:
Bloomberg is projecting China to hit peak fossil fuel emissions THIS YEAR
7 years ahead of schedule :mao-clap:
Zelensky in a press briefing complaining about how they need more Patriot missiles and missile systems because they are having a hard time with Russian missile and drone barrages, then not less than five minutes later the Ukrainian military bragging about how Ukraine downed every incoming drone and missile.
Everything is fine guys I promise but also we are totally fucked so please help
US, UK, and German officials endorsing the 30 drone attack Moscow, and supporting further strikes in the future.
They have lost all fear of nuclear war.
Western leaders appear to lack the basic empathy to understand the insane pressure this will create in Moscow to resort to nuclear weapons.
Business Insider- Russia has spent $67B on the war in Ukraine. This is less than the aid the US alone has given Ukraine.
Another big missile strike on Kiev. Rumors abound that the remaining Patriot missile battery has been taken out. In addition, 5 Ukrainian Su-24s modified to carry Storm Shadow missiles were destroyed and a stockpile of the missiles was also taken out apparently.
Russia's definitely stepped up their game in the last month or so in terms of missile/drone barrages. And the experience in taking out Patriot systems must also be nice for the Russian military, if NATO tries to get jiggy with it.
Wonder if there will be less interest in the Patriot system after this or if the grift is truly independent of reality. Though, what's the alternative for western countries? Something tells me Russia isn't gonna hand over their air defense systems.
Wonder if there will be less interest in the Patriot system after this or if the grift is truly independent of reality.
I mean, generally the reality of buying american arms is not so much independent of the usefulness of the weapons as it is part of a security compact. Buy american arms if you expect americans to come to your aid. That was the case with Saudi. If the americans don't let you buy arms, odds are they don't think you're that close - which was the case with Turkiye and India.
And then there's the EU which is probably part of the arms production pipeline in some way, right?
Su-24s
Are you being serious? At least it makes more sense to use those than su-25s
It's a wonder why it took Russia so long to really implement such a strategy. To minimise civilian casualties? To improve public perception? Because they really didn't have enough missiles until more recently (not implying that they 'ran out' as the western media has been saying the entire war, but that it took a while for production to ramp up)
I think part of it was testing the ways of getting past AA and then destroying the AA.
Mostly I really do think Russia was hoping that the war wouldn't take this long and that they could avoid turning Ukraine into a smoldering heap. Russia's biggest mistake since the fall of the USSR has been expecting the west to act rationally. Its really hard to deal with a person or group that won't even work in its own best interests.
I think the limiting factor is probably intel. They need to know what they're shooting and where it is.
