xNIBx

NATO’s is not going to be part of Turkey’s geopolitical schemes. Nukes are needed in order to be on an even footing with the other regional powers(which will also have nukes). Even if Saudi Arabia/Iran never intend to nuke Turkey, they will be at an advantage.

Hard power translates to soft power. And if your regional opponents have nukes and you dont have nukes, you will be at a significant soft power disadvantage.

Btw Turkey is building its first nuclear power plant, with help from Russia. Saudi Arabia also intends to build nuclear power plants soon. Thats the first step to creating a nuclear weapon.

Pretty sure there are NATO nukes sitting in Turkey already

Those are US controlled nukes. And the US doesnt have the best relation with Turkey atm. They are there now, gone tomorrow. Turkey cant rely on american nukes. If other regional powers have nukes, they need to have nukes. And if Turkey has nukes, then Greece needs to have nukes for selfprotection.

Turkey gets to wave their dicks around and make demands at the big boy table despite being a complete joke of a country.

They have the 2nd biggest military in NATO, after the US, an immensely important geographical location and they are a regional power(along with Iran and Saudi Arabia).

And if Iran and Saudi Arabia get nukes, then Turkey will get nukes. And if Turkey gets nukes, then unless there is an EU army, Greece will want to get nukes.

So you would be ok if Turkey says “we only invaded those greek islands because they had greek military bases in them”? I am just wondering, since when having military bases(your own or of allies), in your own sovereign, internationally recognized territory is an acceptable casus belli for you.

Would you be ok if the US invaded Cuba, if Cuba had russian bases? Is this what you are saying? How something like this justifies invasion?

The Acropolis of Athens is extremely small. EPCOT is 40x larger(123 hectares vs 3 hectares).

Noone in the West wants Putin dead because his replacement will be even more hardcore. Every potential replacement candidate, people with real power, are bigger hawks than Putin. We might see Russia do a full conversion to war economy or some nukes flying.

I mean this is what homophobes use when they say “hate the sin, love the sinner”. You are still a sinner. And this isnt just some interpretation or parable, it clearly says it is an abomination. It’s just silly.

Turkey under the Kemalists is an example of a primarily Muslim nation at least attempting to build a liberal democracy.

Yes, building a liberal democracy by using military dictatorships. When you are trying to force something on people that dont want it(at least the majority), thats when you get Erdogan. It might suck for turks living in Western Turkey and in cities like Istanbul, Izmir and Ankara but the other half of turks have a majority.

And one of the fundamental principles of a democracy is that majority rules. You cant use the military to overthrow democratically elected governments just because you dont like their policy.

However, i agree with your point, there are plenty of turks who selfidentity as muslim and are ok with lgbtq, etc, just like there are christians. Though i never understood how that works. Like how can the Church of Sweden participate in Pride parades. At what point something stops being christianity and becomes a social club? In the Bible is clearly says that homosexuality is bad.

Noone is using windows because it is cool and hip and i doubt microsoft advertises windows. People use windows because they work and do what they want. Maybe they could use ubuntu, but why would they do that? What does ubuntu offer that windows dont?

I’ll tell you why they(including me) dont use linux, because maybe their wifi wont work(or they will have to compile the universe to make it work) or their favourite app or game wont work. And even if you could make a piece of hardware or software work in linux, the performance might be inferior because it will be using generic drivers, instead of the proprietary windows only drivers that the manufacturer has made.

Ultimately, people dont care about open source or privacy enough, to sacrifice their convenience.

It’s not semantics. True, you can overthrow a government without a military invasion but doing a military invasion is much more serious and more “bad”. My point is that the US hasnt recently done the “more bad” thing(except for Libya but not even Russia gave a fuck about that), while Russia is actively doing the “more bad” thing.

The expanding of NATO depends on democratically elected governments of sovereign countries choosing to join an alliance. NATO didnt roll tanks over those countries forcing them to join NATO. If NATO did that, i would agree that it would be a very bad thing.

There are a lot of degrees of interactions between countries. Soft power, hard power, hybrid warfare, etc. Not all of them are equal or destructive. Just because Russia is currently doing the worst kind of interaction(invasion), you cant equate all negative interactions between countries to rationalize “but all countries are doing bad stuff”.

Russia had very little soft power and with this invasion, they wasted large chunks of it. They proved to everyone that ultimately, they are willing to use military force to achieve their objectives. The fact that the US did/does it, doesnt justify it. Both sides can be bad and in this specific situation, one side is clearly in the wrong while the other side is supporting the “good” side(for their own reasons).

Do you not think that we should respect country borders and their governments, especially when they are democratically elected? The whole “it was a coup, thats how Zelensky got elected” is bullshit that was started by Russia AFTER the invasion.

I went back and checked the russian statements after the latest ukranian elections, where the actual antirussian candidate(Poroshenko) had lost. The Kremlin was tendative but hopeful since their main “bad guy” had lost. Kremlin didnt say anything about staged elections, didnt say anything about CIA conspiracy to elect Zelensky or anything like that. Kremlin was “well, at least that asshole(Poroshenko) lost, maybe we can find some common ground with Zelensky”.

But Russia lacked the soft power to do that. So they overplayed their hand and used hard power to achieve it.

the USA deployed troops for a “joint training” with Brazilian troops during (far-right USA backed) Bolsonaro’s government.

I mean the US is training people from other countries and when it comes to Latin America, those people are usually far right. Is this a good thing? No. But this isnt as bad as invading a country. Again, it is a spectrum. There is a difference between Russia training for example people from Donbas(bad), or giving them Buk missiles(more bad) or straight up invading(most bad) or straight up going after Ukraine’s capital instead of just liberating/securing the separatist regions(you have gone full disney bad guy).

This is what i am talking about Russia overplaying their hand. You cant really talk about “protecting the people of Donbas”, when you are literally speed marching(literally airlifting and dropping) to Kiev. You dont give a fuck about Donbas, you just want a regime change(through violence, against the democratic results) in Ukraine.

Did the US deploy military troops in Bolivia? You do understand the difference between saying “yeah, we support you” and then local forces do a coup and literally invading and using your own troops to violently overthrowing a government. Dont you think there is a huge difference there?

Did the US deploy military troops in Brazil?

Andorra.

When did the last military coup in Latin America, orchestrated by CIA ,happen? I am not saying that the US is great but at some point, we need to talk about the present. And at the present(and recent past), the US is not trying to overthrow a government, at least not by using military force in Latin America.

As far as the war in Ukraine in concerned, the US is doing the right thing, even if they are doing it because it benefits them. This is the only time since WW2 that the US is doing the right thing. Have you ever wondered why historically neutral countries like Sweden want to join NATO now? What caused that change?

Mexico has every right to join the Warsaw Pact and i would be on Mexico’s and Russia’s side if the US invaded Mexico for wanting to join an alliance.

Now let’s talk about how NATO is threatening Russia. How would that happen? If Ukraine joined NATO, do you think NATO would invade Russia? You do realize that Russia has nukes, right? NATO is not about invading Russia, it’s about preventing Russia, a big country with nukes, from invading smaller countries with no nukes.

There was one time, when Turkey had a legitimate chance of joining the EU, back in 2005ish. Back then, one of their biggest supporters of their EU candidacy was Greece. Greece wanted to normalize the relation with Turkey and Turkey wanted to become a normal european country. Greece was even willing to throw Cyprus under the bus, by supporting the Annan Plan, which was objectively terrible for Cyprus. Though the thinking was “if Turkey becomes “normal”, then any negative part of the deal wouldnt be relevant, it could be like Belgium”. Though Cyprus(and pretty much all its political parties) voted against the deal.

Erdogan was seen as the extrovert, moderate muslim, someone who could merge moderate Islam with european values.

Nowadays, Erdogan and Turkey are on a completely different place. Erdogan has said “we might come on night” and “our missiles can reach Athens”.

https://www.politico.eu/article/recep-erdogan-turkey-threat-against-greece-g20/

https://www.politico.eu/article/erdogan-warns-greece-that-turkish-missiles-can-reach-athens%EF%BF%BC/

Turkey is constantly pushing their “blue homeland” concept, which basically includes a lot of greek islands in the Aegean. And thats on top of ridiculous Exclusive Economic Zone(EEZ) claims that basically say “(greek) islands have no EEZ rights”. Turkey feels that it has been historically wrong and that they need more “breathing space” in the Aegean sea(where Greece owns all the islands except 3).

And even the turkish society is different. There is a greater chasm between western/urban Turkey and the rest of Turkey. There was a hope that the rest of Turkey could slowly transition closer to european values, but nowadays it seems the country is getting split in half and each half is moving further away from the other.

And last but not least, the russian invasion of Ukraine has shown to the world that integration and shared economic interests do not always translate to peace. So do we really want to do the same mistake with Turkey?

PS I am greek, so i am biased.

I know it’s been 80 years since WW2 but it seems a lot of people have forgotten the main reason for the creation of EU. The EU was created in order is to avoid wars in Europe. It might sound ridiculous to many, but Europe used to have A LOT of wars in the past.

Economic criteria, corruption, etc are all great metrics but in the end, it is about avoiding wars. And a Ukraine inside the EU means a safer EU, a safer Ukraine and even a safer Russia. Russia wont be able to go full retard and Ukraine would have to compromise and reach some peace agreement in order to join the EU.

Inclusivity is very important for the EU. Reminder that even Russia could join the EU but a country like Russia, which sees itself as a super power, wouldnt want to be the 5th-6th most important member of the EU(in economic terms).

A lot of people are saying that this weakened Putin, put the seed of rebellion in the minds of people, etc. But i disagree. The problem with Russia is that it isnt authoritarian enough. You might think that it is funny that i say this but it is true. The most unstable governments are the ones who havent gone full authoritarian or full democratic. It’s the middle area that is dangerous. With this war, Russia was becoming more and more authoritarian. And now after the coup, the deal will be sealed.

Putin will unify the military and use this coup as an excuse to clamp things down even more. Noone would even be allowed to have any kind of personal military, noone would be allowed to say anything against the government. This was already the case before but now it will be even more. Prigozhin was talking shit for over a year, Putin realizes that it was a mistake to let that happen.

As long as things in Ukraine remain somewhat static(or better for Russia), Putin is safe. If Russia losses Zaporizhia, Putin will be in danger.

PS The failed coup against Erdogan also empowered him and allowed him to consolidate power and purge the opposition.

So what is the alternative? Let bigger countries invade other countries, just because no country is perfect enough to receive outside help?

You should ask yourself then, why all these wars had insanely large protests, both in the US but especially in Europe. Also why most political parties and many countries in Europe opposed those wars. And why this war in Ukraine is different.

These previous wars were american imperialism, while this Ukraine war is about stopping russian imperialism. Stopping russian imperialism isnt only the moral thing(like it was opposing those previous american wars) but also aligns with our geopolitical interests. Thats why literally everyone but tankies/far right support helping Ukraine.

So let me ask you, what do you think we should do? Should we let Russia invade and take over Ukraine? Should we let Russia invade and take over the Baltic Countries? What about Russia taking over Poland? Are countries sovereign and do they have the right to decide their foreign policy?

In 5 years, Turkey might decide to grab a few greek islands, in order to get some “breathing space” in the Aegean. Should we let Turkey do that? Is it ok for countries to invade other countries and grab whatever they want? I am just trying to understand your logic.

Should we never oppose invaders in order to minimize cost and human casualties?

I havent played Genshin but from what i have heard, Star Rail(from the same developer) is even better(though very different gameplay). Tighter story telling, amazing music(timed with in game actions) and a lot of quality of life features that dont exist in Genshin.