Zoraptor

'Funny'* thing is that half of the world leaders who have turned up to the opening ceremony are... muslim. Literally, 10 out of 20 of the leaders there are muslim. In contrast the only muslim 'country' in the diplomatic boycott is Kosovo, which doesn't even have an independent foreign policy. It's deeply ironic that when you get an actual and genuine case of muslims being persecuted muslim 'champions' like MbS or MbZ kiss the ring and muslim little b brotherhood be damned. And you have those with similar supposed sentiments who didn't turn up- one Recep Tayyip Erdogan, for example; since he's in the prelims of an election race and the optics wouldn't be good- sending Uighurs back to China despite all their talk. *For something I actually found funny, the country with the 3rd most contestants in the Olympics is listed as ROC- which is, of course, the abbreviation for Republic of China, ie Taiwan. Sadly, in this case it actually stands for Russian Olympic Committee...

There are a couple more capable neighboring states than Ukraine. Poland. Japan. Arguably Finland and Norway too, despite having far lower population. Ukraine really isn't very capable at all. And, well, the US. After all Sarah Palin could see Russia from her house*, and that's pretty much the definition of neighboring. The problem for Russia is not Ukraine's capability, it's that the next round of 'Russian threats' post Ukraine accession would have purely defensive NATO troops, planes and missiles 100km from Smolensk, Belgorod and Rostov; and no natural defense lines before Moscow. *yes, I know.

The damage to the house was definitely not caused just by a suicide belt and is from casual inspection far more consistent with a missile strike. There are alternative explanations for the damage that don't involve missiles though. A missile is what some of the locals say as well, though all agree there were ground troops present their and the US accounts differ very significantly. Hard to reconcile the locals' accounts of a two hour gun battle with the US implying a surgical/ precise in and out with minimal fighting (plus losing a helicopter, albeit helicopters are fundamentally unreliable), and though the locals are not trustworthy enough to take at their word the bulk of supplementary evidence does support their version. Civilian casualties (10, from the pro Turkey/ HTS White Helmets or 7 from the more anti Turkey/ HTS SOHR) observed on the ground and from the US recounting do not reconcile at all as they say Qurayshi only killed 2 children and his wife in the blast. That leaves either 7 or 4 civilian deaths, and one or four unexplained potential fighter deaths which is only really consistent with and compatible to the locals' account. Has to be said, there's at least one pretty recent examples of local accounts being 100% accurate and the US ones being... somewhat unreliable.

ISIS have lost another 'Caliph'- in very similar circumstances to Baghdadi. Also hits all the stereotypical points from the conflict. Major ISIS figure found in Syria right next to the Turkish border and in an area of Turkish influence/ protection if not outright control. Controlled by the 'reformed' jihadis of Jabhat al Nusra Hayat Tahrir al Sham. Blows himself up rather than be captured. Like Baghdadi (and a significant and literal majority of senior ISIS leaders) was captured and held by the US at Camp Bucca before being released. I'm always slightly amused when someone choosing to blow themselves up rather than be captured is described as 'cowardly'. If it had been an ISIS raid and a US soldier choosing to blow himself up rather than be captured it would be the height of heroism. Just because you don't like them doesn't make them a coward.

Dumb, sure, crappy, meh; she's arguably correct and it's mostly dumb because it was obviously going to get a negative reaction. Note: I absolutely loathe ethnicity and race as concepts, so bear that in mind... Hardly anyone knows what race and ethnicity mean and use the terms interchangeably. They're fundamentally stupid concepts as used now and since they reduce whole groups of people to a few traits as if that's all that is important fundamentally crappy even when used as intended. Race being based on physical differences and ethnicity being based on cultural ones is the distinction that should be in effect but people can't handle the idea that Idris Elba could be racially west African but also ethnically English (and not just the National Front types you might imagine; we also got the infamous BBC claim that Luther doesn't count as a black tv series lead because... he doesn't have black friends or eat Caribbean food or act 'black'. Doubly ironic because Idris Elba has nothing to do with the Caribbean, he's of direct west African extraction) Goldberg is arguably right because the Holocaust wasn't about race, but about ethnicity. Jews weren't separated based on physical traits as they are indistinguishable from general Europeans or Levantines with the stereotypical racist tropes of big nose and sallow skin being, well, stereotypical racist tropes. If you took me and Heinrich Himmler and asked a random person which had Jewish ancestry based on stereotypes 99% they'd pick Himmler, not me. Their genocide was perpetrated on cultural lines, not physical ones, and thus can most properly be said to based on ethnicity, not race, whatever the Nazis said. OTOH, the whole reason that the Rwandan Genocide could happen was because there were significant and apparent physical differences between Hutus- darker skinned, more robust build, central African appearance- and Tutsis with lighter skin, more gracile build and more of a north east African appearance. That's how you could get 400k people killed with machetes and sticks and who didn't have a cultural/ religious requirement to self identify; because they were easily identifiable by physical traits. But that is always labeled an ethnic genocide instead of a racial one, which it ought to be labeled as. This is my biennial tirade about how stupid the concepts of race and ethnicity are, set the calendar for February 2024.

If Turkey asked to join NATO she was always going to be allowed in- same if she wanted to join the Warsaw Pact for that matter. For either the strategic advantages outweighed any other considerations; it's a bridge from Europe to Asia and v/v, and from the Med to the Black Sea, and for NATO it was only their second direct border with the USSR after Norway. Indeed, without Turkey the Black Sea would have literally been a Soviet lake. Nice place to put nukes too, and then offer to withdraw them from in return for there being none in Cuba.

Sure, unlike Georgia Ukraine is within NATO's potential area. But if NATO's intention is to include everyone in Europe then that includes Russia too... Ultimately and fundamentally the idea of a military alliance is not to be self perpetuating, but to make itself irrelevant. Labeling any concessions as appeasement just means that you're doing exactly as I said: not recognising that anyone else has genuine security concerns except from NATO. From the Russian POV them making any more concessions just leads to more being demanded further down the line, ie it's appeasement as well. And they made nothing but concessions from 1992 to 2008, didn't get them anywhere except where we are now. You can label any agreement as appeasement if you want. Indeed, such labels are pretty much always a sign of taking a hard line position. Two groups of people labeled the JCPOA as appeasement, for example. Strongly Pro Israel/ anti Iran US politicians and commentators. Strongly anti Israel/ anti US Iranians.

Have you listened to/ read any of the rhetoric that has been spouted recently? What exactly do you think telling Russia to withdraw their troops is, apart from telling them where they can deploy on their own soil? It's most definitely seen that way by NATO when the situation is reversed, and NATO gets decidedly pissy when Russia tells them not to deploy close to her borders. Of course, those are purely defensive deployments due to Russian aggression, anything the Russians do in response to NATO actions is just more aggression... And if NATO had never invaded Serbia... Kosovo predates Crimea, and unlike Crimea had zero legality per international law. That was a conflict in which British troops were- literally literally- ordered to attack Russian ones by NATO Command, specifically by General Wesley Clark. Fortunately that beautiful fellow James Blunt ignored the order as being what it was- completely insane- and got backed up Sir Mike "I'm not going to start World War 3 for you" Jackson. But still, these are the sort of things Russia remembers; its allies are fine to partition- completely outside of international law too, the only argument was 'special case' not that it was actually legal- and its troops fine to attack. That will always be the case, whatever Russia's leadership. That was the case when the decidedly west friendly Yeltsin was in power too- that Pristina incident was while Yeltsin was President. And the Open Door policy that NATO holds so very dear never applied to Russia even when Yeltsin applied. Truth of the matter is, when Russia has weak leaders like Yeltsin NATO ignores her. When she has a strong leader like Putin they at least pay attention. Lesson learned. And in either case NATO has been persistently aggressive in both tone and conduct, more so than Russia by any objective measure. NATO is a military alliance, that's its entire raison d'être, and is localised to the North Atlantic. It gets nothing, indeed a proper détente with Russia literally makes it irrelevant. That doesn't matter at all though, unless the existence and necessity of NATO is itself an intrinsic justification, which it isn't. The countries that make up NATO get a decent amount though. Less military spending. Better leverage on China. A Russia less likely to stir trouble on the principle of the matter and a decent bit more.

INSTEX at least theoretically is up and running isn't it? That's what is meant to be used to trade with Iran so the Euros can say that they aren't abrogating the JCPOA. SWIFT really ought to go anyway*, since it's well known that its security is compromised; not something you want for an essential financial service. At the moment it's in no one's interests to make an issue of that because it's important to everyone, cut Russia off but it becomes a lot less important for her and some obvious confidence collapsing jiggery pokery visited on SWIFT would be a perfect parting shot. *or at least get a decent revision.

That plant will be pretty far from the cutting edge by the time its built, which is part of the problem really. 5nm is about to supplanted by 3nm, now, in 2 years time it will be 2 processes behind. If the US wants cutting edge fabs from foreign companies they'll have to cut down on the- as rampant as China's, if more subtle- industrial espionage and use of standover tactics to get trade secrets. Otherwise you'll get older tech taking advantages of the massive subsidies on offer while the real development stays in Asia.

Well yeah. If you actually do want to 'contain' China then you have to deal with Russia. If you want to deal with Russia you have to, well, deal with Russia. That means compromise, not dictating terms. The complete lack of any sense at all that Russia has genuine concerns- and such ludicrous spectacles as simultaneously saying that NATO forces can deploy anywhere they want, it's their right, but Russia cannot deploy troops in their own country if they're too close to a border- shows the diplomatic equivalence of sociopathy or is a deliberate policy to keep crises going. And let's be frank, since this current circus is a six monthly to annual affair every time an exercise is held it's the latter. There's plenty of mid term benefits for the US from stoking tensions with Russia though. As previous, it keeps the alliance they are head of at the forefront and gives it a purpose. Economically, a response would be shouldered in massive disproportion by economic rival Europe in such terms as losing 40% of their gas supply; to be replaced mostly by far more expensive US supplies, of course, and carried by ships that don't exist yet. The sanctions and threat of sanctions over Nord Stream 2 were designed entirely to keep Russia paying Ukraine for transit rights, keep veto over the supply and impose a further cost on everyone due to Ukraine stealing so much of it. And of course there's the perpetual threat of using- European run, not US run world standard- SWIFT as a weapon. Which would immediately, of course, make it not the world standard any more to anyone who isn't a US proxy. Militarily... well it isn't going to come to shooting, unless the Russians double the number of troops, but you still get a nice bump for US arms suppliers.

Dude, that's complete and utter bollocks, then and now. Go back and read the initial threads you quoted earlier for the then. For the now, and literally on this page. What's even the point of trying to gaslight when a complete counter is a mousescroll up?

Well sure in general, just not in the Med. They're not close to anything Russian except the forces in Syria, and transit of the Bosporus by carriers is literally proscribed by treaty. Guess the US could just abrogate Montreux as well, but that wouldn't even be popular in Turkey. Comparison to a Russian deployment to Hmeimem is pretty irrelevant. The US and its allies has contiguous airspace and supply capability all over western and central europe and over the entire Med (and Baltic for that matter). They can easily redeploy assets if needed. The Russians had to avoid Turkish and NATO airspace which meant a massive detour was required over the Caspian and approval from Iran and Iraq if they wanted to take an air route. Indeed, some of the planes refueled in Iran. Different nowadays, but that was 2015 and only a few months away from Turkey shooting down the slowest Su-24 ever built.

Again, that was all to be carried out after the Japanese surrender and in the context of there being literally zero resistance; and the plan was completely conjectural even then. There's absolute conclusive proof of that in your own source as well to whit: "On August 21, Vasilevskii issued two directives to begin “immediately and no later than August 21” the embarkation of the 87th Rifle Corps from the Sakhalin ports of Maoka, Otomari, and Toyohira[sic]" is preceded by "The landing units encountered a violent storm on the way from Maoka to Otomari, and it was not until August 26, four days later than Vasilevskii’s plan [to take Sakhalin], that the Soviet troops captured the port." Indeed, they didn't capture Toyohara either until the 26th. So even according to your source the plan called for embarkation of troops that weren't there, from ports they didn't hold and didn't even plan to capture- in a best case scenario- until August 22 one day after the supposed invasion of Hokkaido was meant to take place. That problem with not noticing the implication of dates has been persistent too. So, frankly I can't be bothered citing actual sources because (1) you don't read them anyway and (2) you don't actually provide reliable sources, and I'm a bit tired of critiquing them for free. The Japanese were going to oppose any landing; a speculative plan developed specifically in the assumption that they wouldn't and launched from bases they didn't hold with troops that weren't there is... dunno.

I saw someone say that the Russians could invade with 45 minutes notice, and I wasn't sure if they were being facetious or not. Multiple sources are carrying various interpretations of that Biden/ Zelensky exchange. The most baffling part of it by far is 'once the ground is frozen'. It's already frozen and has been for weeks, and in contrast every day gets closer to the Rasputitsa. Could be a Bidenism of "while the ground is frozen" but even that doesn't make much sense in context. For the more full version, [with apologies for the shonky embed, I think twitter hates me for having high privacy settings and the original tweet got got...] https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FKJDVv9XsAoYd-c?format=jpg&name=900x900 If it's an accurate representation- and there are multiple, similar takes from other sources- it's pretty damning. Well in that case you're repeatedly offering yourself as a target by defending belief based on revisionist history. They handwave 2 understrength divisions, presumably without being aware that the same organisational size force in the far less important Kurils was actually 80,000 men. They handwave the logistics. They handwave the soviets lack of amphibious troops, and lack of specialist ships, and the lack of non specialist ships, and the lack of airbasing options. They've got a hard on for Sakhalin, which is an awful analogue for an invasion of Hokkaido as the soviets already held the north of that island and had a near 5:1 advantage in numbers- including a lot of tanks, which could not be used in amphibious operations- instead of a likely 1:5 disadvantage for an amphibious invasion. They ignore the far more relevant Kurils where the soviets could only ever invade with a few thousand men at a time because that was their logistical limit, and they still had ~3000 casualties despite almost none of the Japanese there actually fighting. Any imminent invasion of Hokkaido would have been a disaster. The only reason an actual plan was developed at all was on the assumption it would not be opposed, and the Kurils disabused them of that. The vast preponderance of historical analysis is on my side, not yours. Sure, the soviets planned an attack on Hokkaido in the rhetorical/ theoretical sense. That was a threat for 1946 though, and realistically at least March at the earliest of that year. All the other stuff that made them surrender was happening right then.

Exactly. Nice links, you can get the previous debunkment of the fp article from there, though you'd just not read/ understand it, again. TL: obviouslyDR, Hokkaido was not defended by just 2 understrength divisions. Even if it were it would be irrelevant. The tiny and largely irrelevant Kurils were defended by two 'understrength' divisions too, the 89th and 91st. That was, hmm, 80,000 men. Because oddly enough not all units are divisions. Mostly though the soviets had extremely limited amphibious capacity which the Japanese knew, and is why they only developed a plan for an invasion after the Japanese had already surrendered and for a scenario where there was no resistance; and why they had to invade the miniscule Kurils over a roughly 2 week period, and why they never even took all the islands. Sakhalin is utterly irrelevant, as the soviets already held half the island. They also suffered the small matter of near 20% casualties despite most of their landings being literally unopposed. The reasons for Japanese surrender were the nukes and the utter collapse of the Kwantung Army in a week, which completely compromised the supply for the 3 million Japanese soldiers in China. A soviet invasion of Hokkaido might be a problem, eventually, but they had multiple more pressing things that had not gone entirely to their advantage happening right then. This isn't the Cold War. NATO has a massive advantage in terms of resources and troops, now. Indeed, it's one of the trademark signs of gaslighting that a force of 100k is being played up as if it's the ~10 million man Red Army of 1945 when it's literally 1% of the size. The entire deployable Russian army is only about 300k. Ukraine would add that many troops to NATO, by itself. The nukes Ukraine (and Belarus/ Khazakstan) had were unusable though. They probably could have reverse engineered them eventually, but that would not have been popular with anyone and have cost money that they didn't have. There's essentially no plausible scenario in which Ukraine retains the nukes that were based there to this day. Consider how different the reaction to Ukraine selling North Korea rocket engines would be if they also had nuclear warheads; no way it would be swept under the carpet then no matter how pro western the government. At best they could have retained them until ~2001. Kind of ironic though, the original reason why people think that nukes --> no invasion has nothing to do with Russia, but with the earlier western attacks on Libya and Iraq as opposed to the DPRK.

That isn't how chip manufacturing works though. Eventually the US could support itself in chips sure, but we're talking years, not months. You don't have generic chip wafers that you just plonk whatever designs you want on, the designs go hand in hand with the manufacturing process you use. Apple's M1 chip is designed for TSMC 5nm. And it's not just that it is not designed for, say, an Intel process, it's that Intel literally does not have an equivalent process in production. Their closest is roughly equivalent to TSMC 7nm, but is far less reliable even 6+ years after it was meant to launch. If Apple, with all its resources, had to switch to 'Intel7' (formerly Intel 10nm) they'd have probably 6 months with zero production in the best case. The Intel and TSMC approaches are pretty different, so at worst they'd have to do a far more comprehensive design; the one thing Apple could not do even with its massive resources is create capacity out of thin air. And that's Apple, for anyone else the problem gets exponentially worse. That's precisely why there's a scramble to get new fab capacity in the US and Europe, and lolly scramble of inducements too. That's going to take literal years though, as they're immensely complicated to build.

Lol, yearly reminder that the evidence Gromnir provided for that claim was a plan developed literally literally after the Japanese had already surrendered, which he got from a blog that literally literally lied about the dates. Shame I checked the source. Know all those estimates for invasion forces in the hundreds of thousands to million range required for invading the Home Islands that necessitated nuking two cities? Well, the Soviets were going to do it with like 6 ships, and an initial force of about 1500, ie one thousand five hundred. Oh yeah after that got debunked there was a multi hour long youtube video (with, of course, no time stamp provided, just watch the whole thing) that for some reason I couldn't be bothered watching. Uh, really? Russia's western border is almost entirely land, and thus unsuitable for carriers. China's east coast however is rather more suited to them. The options that the US has for land basing in Europe are practically infinite. The options that the US has for land basing off China's coast have a massive gap between Japan and the Phils, and The Phils and Singapore- and IIRC there are no land based US planes in Singapore either, only helis. The only added deterence from a carrier in the Med might, at a stretch, be an attack on Tartus or Hmeimem. Which can probably be discounted as being somewhat too much of an escalation. You cannot tell anything about priorities from that, at all. Meh, Estonia is already ~100mi from St Pete's, and that reality has been lived with for 30 years. The closeness to Rostov/ Smolensk/ Belgorod from Ukraine hugely outweighs that. And yeah, it's an open secret that Finland and especially Sweden are nowhere near as neutral as they say, already. If they actually joined NATO that would formalise something that is pretty close to de facto already for both, and in Sweden's case has been so pretty much since NATO was established. But, it's handy enough to have someone 'neutral' for exactly these sorts of situations that they probably won't.

I haven't seen it either but I'd tend to expect those problems to be due to a more meta explanation: role sanitisation. SW specifically (and Disney in general) have a habit of telling you that leads are in a dodgy profession to set them up with antihero cred, but they seldom actually show them doing bad stuff even when logically they should. And when they do do bad things it's almost always because a redemption ark is incoming or they're mind controlled or whatever. So you would have Boba Fett becoming a crime lord, but also not doing crime lordy stuff like death stick peddling and bumping off rival corner boys because drugs are bad and you simply can't have Marlo from The Wire as a lead in SW. Probably the best example is Han Solo, whose role as a smuggler got so sanitised that Lucas felt it necessary to retcon Han shooting Greedo first (which was entirely on Lucas, of course). What was Han smuggling for Jabba? Medical supplies, fluffy bunny toys and blankets for orphans? You'd think so... If you're told that someone is a crime boss or smuggler for a crime lord or whatever and they don't behave like it you tend to get ~cognitive dissonance~ from the contradiction. It's also why I have no expectations for them doing a 'bad guy' series like Darth Bane or whatever. Villain protagonists like- 'realistically' portrayed crime boss- Tony Soprano, Walter White, Vic Mackey or Dexter Morgan may get plaudits for depth of character etc but they're fundamentally incompatible with being kid friendly.

If you haven't played before you should just keep playing. You're better off not being spoiled.

Not just UK and US. The divide is mostly US/ UK and most of the Eastern European expansion members vs Germany and France. It's basically those who want NATO to be the be all and end all of European defence and thus need it to have A Perpetual Enemy to give it purpose, and those who want it supplanted or supplemented by a European Defence Force- that Russia could eventually be part of. That's why you have ludicrous statements like Russia being ready to invade at hours notice despite having a third of Ukraine's troops in the area and have had the same pattern of imminent invasion playing out roughly every 6 months for 7 years; in order for NATO to be capital N Necessary you have to have someone opposed to it, and the only candidate is Russia. It's extremely easy to stoke tensions when you know that there's not actually an invasion imminent, if anything Ukraine trying to tamp down tensions is evidence that they think things are going too far, and Putin may actually have been backed into a corner. Fundamentally though that's why Russia can never be allowed to join NATO- both Yeltsin and Putin tried, and the USSR tried to join as well in the 50s- and no concessions or limitations can ever be made to lower tension. You need the threat and you need the tension, else what's the point of NATO? And then you get the European Army France and Germany want instead.

I don't think there's anything surer than MS having tried to buy Steam. I'd be extremely surprised if they didn't have a standing offer now.

ISIS prison break in Syria is in its 5th day. May involve as many as 800 militants being freed, pretty much definitely 500. Of course they're being surreptitiously backed up by Turkey, as always, who drone struck the head of SDF Intelligence in the middle of things as a break from blowing up random Yezidis in Sinjar. Three years and pretty much nothing has been done about the prisoners except ignoring them and hoping the problem goes away- except, of course, western countries deciding people who grew up there and got radicalised there aren't actually their problem and should be foisted on impoverished countries like Syria, Iraq, Bangladesh and New Zealand via citizenship cancellations. (Note: that Al Jazeera article is actually pretty rubbish in a number of aspects, as they have a very heavy pro Turkey slant as do most of the commentators- especially Charles Lister- they reference, but it is a bit more in depth than the far more dry BBC equivalent. It's pretty much impossible to suppress ISIS in the Badiya permanently because it's like a scaled down Afghanistan in pretty much every respect. So no outright mountains, but lots of very rough terrain, caves and any operation to try and force ISIS out would be too porous; they just relocate temporarily. The problem in SDF areas is similar in effect, but for opposite reasons. It's mostly dry, flat, wasteland. Sure, you can put checkpoints in but they'd just get driven around or use smuggler routes- and checkpoints also make lovely targets for suicide bombers and massively annoy the local populace who then can't go anywhere without being stopped. Drones are useless too, so long as they aren't stupid enough to drive in convoys, since there are enough legit users to hide among. Finally, of course, the reason why there are tensions between the Deir ez Zor arabs and SDF is that those arabs literally literally were ISIS 5 years ago, and only switched sides when it became clear ISIS would lose. And, allegedly, when bribed to by Saudi Arabia. But hey, Turkey hates the SDF so gotta talk about dissension in its ranks in the hope it's true; same as the thousandth uncorroborated report of Iranian and Russian backed forces fighting each other because they want that to be true too)

Those aren't exactly great examples in this context, but you can take it as read that Russia has ignored or abrogated its fair share of agreements too and is most definitely a kettle. Point being of course that for some reason you only ever hear about said kettle in the media, and not the pot doing exactly the same thing. The Helsinki Accords and Budapest Memoranda don't have force of law, though as agreements they're fine to cite as examples. The former is irrelevant as a plus for Ukraine's position though as it is trumped by the Crimean Sovereignty Referendum of 1991 in which 94% of Crimeans voted to leave Ukraine. An approved referendum is a legal way to secede, and that makes the Helsinki Accords apply in Crimea's favour*, not Ukraine's. And yeah, the referendum was both approved and ratified by the Ukrainian SSR. Of course, that is never mentioned in the western press, nor is Ukraine sending in 70,000 troops and enacting Direct Rule in 1995 when the Crimean Parliament tried to action it. Indeed, Ukraine literally changed their constitution to make secession impossible after that, requiring every single oblast to majority vote for anyone to leave. The latter of course is a plural set of agreements and more properly referred to as the Budapest Memoranda; but strangely only the Ukraine one ever gets mentioned, and only recently. Reason for that being of course that the west is currently sanctioning Belarus, to whom another one of the Budapest Memoranda applies, in contravention of article 3, to whit "Refrain from using economic pressure on Belarus, [Kazakhstan and Ukraine] to influence their politics". Of course, that was flagrantly ignored by the west with regards to Ukraine too, when they had a Russian friendly government; and it was most definitely ignored by Russia when convenient as well. Not a treaty and never really worth the paper it was written on, for both the west and Russia. The 2007 Friendship Treaty was abrogated multiple times by Ukraine in 2014, even prior to Crimea agreeing to join the Russian Federation. They voted overwhelming to ban the Russian language (to be fair, in a moronic fit of revolutionary zeal with Svoboda brown shirts overseeing proceedings immediately post coup, but still) and voted multiple times for other measures that contravened the agreement. Let's also be frank, a Treaty of Friendship with Russia is intrinsically incompatible with joining NATO and handing Sevastopol Naval Base over to the US in exactly the same way a US- Canada Friendship Treaty is incompatible with Canada joining the Warsaw Pact and announcing that a purely defensive Soviet submarine pen up the St Lawrence was a great idea. And those were both things the post coup Kiev Government said they would do. *Of course the Helsinki Accords are in many ways a very self defeating issue to bring up anyway, since there's a very obvious counter example in Kosovo where pretty much every metric is worse than Crimea. Seized by force by NATO, quarter of a million Serbs ethnically cleansed under their aegis to make an Albanian ethnostate (one of which already exists anyway), and never even had a rigged referendum let alone a legit one. Completely against the 'rules based international order' that they want others to follow, and such a very obvious case of "rules for thee but not for me".

That at least has very little to do with Erdogan himself. Kurdish independence is utter anathema to every party in Turkey except the HDP and even they don't formally want secession, just more rights. Erdogan is also perfectly happy with Kurds running bits of his neighbours, so long as they're Uncle Toms like the Barzanis in Iraq and will sell him (well, his son) oil under the table. 'Kurdistan' is the perfect example of carrot dangling in foreign policy though. In the cold war it was the USSR dangling it for the PKK to get an insurgency going in Turkey, since then it's been consistently used by the west in Syria, Iraq and Iran- and while it hasn't been used by them in Turkey it's certainly one of the big reasons for tensions between Turkey and the west. It's pretty easy to judge how far they are willing to take that support in practice though, by the response to the Iraqi Kurd independence referendum. Pretty much zero international support bar thoughts and prayers from Israel- who'd support literally anything and anyone that weakens an arab state, hence the support for ISIS aligned Jaish Khalid ibn Walid in Syria- and the attempt was crushed with embarrassing ease by, well, the same Iraqi army that surrendered Mosul to a couple of hundred guys in Toyota Hiluces.