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.
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.
Westerners legitimately believe that Russian nukes don't work.
There's literally no proof of this, they just believe that because Russia has had difficulties in Ukraine that that means their nuclear arsenal is completely nonfunctional.
I'm starting to get afraid that the leadership believes this propaganda too.
Propaganda poisons the same water our leaders drink from.
At least some of the State department will believe this wholesale.
bodes well for the world when one side of the war managed to delude itself into not believing in mutually assured destruction
tbh looking at what the drone strike actually achieved, i'm not afraid of nukes either. there will be pressure for escalation, but i'd sooner see zelensky getting targetted instead of the nuking of kyiv.
not to mention the speculation of how what NATO really wants is an end of static lines. they want the russians to blink and start trying big arrow moves.
i agree with the mearsheimer on this. nukes enter the picture only if ukraine starts actually winning.
Russia is currently losing tens of thousands of soldiers a year, and suffering air strikes in its capital.
Refusing to use nukes when it could instantly resolve the situation in their favor is a supreme act of restraint - they are consigning potentially hundreds of thousands of Russians to die miserably by refusing to use their best weaponry.
Humans are NOT rational creatures. Having no fear of nukes in this environment is just naive. We are far, far closer than the Cold War ever brought us to nuclear exchange.
using nukes at this stage would instantly turn russia into a pariah state. remember: the global south isn't getting farcical western coverage of this. very few people think moscow was just owned by anything approaching an air raid. hell, most people aren't tuned to what coverage there is. people in india or brazil or china who care about these things understand this as a conflict where russia has the winning hand. nukes at this moment would rob all of russia's friends any basis by which they can justify their support. it would empower all the economic actors who wish to earn from isolating russia. hell, I can see brazil spending much more money with the state fertilizer factory that it just resurrected and that's just the start. land links with china and india are already an uphill battle and require a lot of political will.
escalation into nukes is not just undesirable from a rational standpoint, it assumes an irrationality that arises from despair, which is why a nuclear ultimatum is in the cards (maybe) in case Crimea is threatened with occupation. the russian government will only use nukes if it feels that the russian state won't survive without them. is there a home grown movement about to coup Putin for failing to be enough of a soldier in this war? is the russian army going to do it? i don't think so, right?
it's up to the russian state to communicate properly to it's population and it's entrenched interests that it is escalating correctly. it musn't just avoid the use of nukes, but also any desires to pour an army of 5 million conscripts into ukraine the occupy the place wholesale. it is clear that today's society is not fine with world war levels of casualties. however, aggression only turns to steel people towards the conflict, not against it, and russia's frontlines seem to advance on the backs of auxiliaries rather than russian regulars.
unfortunately the russian state is dog shit at propaganda and communication.
God help us if a rain of cruise missiles blows up a kindergarten in Russia.
The strikes are going to get worse; keep that in mind. The pressure will be mounting. Even a 1% chance of nuclear war is unacceptable.
Humanity cannot roll the dice forever. Eventually our luck will run out.
Ukraine is sending big r/c airplane 'drones' in desperation. If they had cruise missiles to shoot, they would have already shot them at Moscow.
They’re getting longer range weapons as the West eases into more and more escalation.
This is a ladder and it’s easy to see where it goes when all these Western powers now openly endorse strikes in Russia.
They are getting longer range weapons - and those weapons are often being destroyed before they're anywhere near use. The tilt has changed recently and Rusfed strikes are hitting Kiev and other targets far behind Ukrop lines as their air defense fails more and more. The time for the ladder to work was last year.
Using nukes would resolve nothing. Russia knows this.
Russian media can easily spin the drone strikes as "a desperate gasp from a failing opponent."
Russia has been moving back the goal posts every time. It's always don't cross this line. Okay don't cross the one behind it. Okay don't cross this 20th line I've drawn.
I'm warning you!
I don't know about you, but I'm kinda glad they aren't as trigger-happy as the Yanks. :scared:
:100-com:
if there was a war in Mexico and they did the same stuff that Ukraine has done to Russia, we would currently be talking about the nuclear fallout cleanup of Mexico City and the millions who had been killed there
So making the same mistake Russian leaders have been making since Khrushchev.
Let's be real, since Stalin
Yeah, that's fair.
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thats only a sideshow. teixeira is a latin third worldist who took on a far right persona online to deliver intel straight to the mexican elven council. now we know to what extent the administration is anti amlo. look for retaliation when the veil between worlds is thin and the fae can freely cross the iron circles.
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