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

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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.

    • SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      The excitement around solar and EVs suggests China is nearing an inflection point in its energy transition more than a half-decade before a 2030 target to peak emissions. It no longer requires heavy government subsidies to push people away from fossil fuels. Cheap solar panels are a better way to make money than burning expensive coal, while EVs are cheaper to operate — and increasingly more fun to drive — than gasoline-powered vehicles.

      BloombergNEF lifted its forecast for China’s 2023 solar installations last week. It now expects the country to add nearly three times the capacity it did just two years ago, or more than the entire total in the US. EVs, meanwhile, made up more than a third of all vehicle sales in China last month.

      That’s bringing China closer to the tipping point where fossil fuel use falls into long-term decline, a milestone that could be reached as soon as next year, according to the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air.

      The road ahead won’t be easy — grid improvements will be needed to keep solar going at its current pace, panel manufacturers face shrinking margins on robust competition, and battery makers will need to avoid supply chain bottlenecks.

      The planet’s largest polluter still burns a lot of coal. But the progress on solar power and EVs show it’s well on its way to a less carbon-intensive future.

      I think it's definitely a more sound long-term strategy than the West's. While I obviously don't give much of a shit about the finances of gulf state monarchies and oligarchs, the people inside those countries are gonna need to be doing stuff other than producing oil, and the only way to have any hope of that is gonna be development, development, development. So I imagine China's basically said to OPEC "Look, we'll offer you long term deals for the next couple of decades while the transition is ongoing but nothing past that, and in exchange, we'll get you in BRICS and the BRI." I feel like this will generate a lot less animosity towards China than the West's very strange and chaotic strategy of arbitrarily burning bridges only to rebuild them, sending their militaries in to the Middle East and then withdrawing them, and just causing destabilisation in general.

      • CTHlurker [he/him]
        ·
        2 years ago

        Don't the gulf states also literally run out of oil after a few decades anyway? And MBS is what, like 40?`So he will probably still be the main guy in charge when the wells actually run dry and Saudi Arabia will have to figure out another way to make money.