I’m sure they feel the same way about the PKK.
I don’t agree with this guy but maybe it is a jab at West claiming PKK (or any of its many branches) are freedom fighters?
Sounds like a strawman to me, I don’t know of any western governments that recognize the PKK as anything other than a terrorist organization.
He is the same sociopath who denies the Assyrian and Armenian genocide. Such a statement from him about Hamas is hardly surprising.
No they are terrorists.
As a reminder, Turkey is a NATO member since 1952.
And it’s occupying a seizable part of another country since 1974. And they basically wrote the handbook on genocide. They are basically creating bad precedents non stop since their foundation.
Yep, my comment was meant to suggest that maybe it’s also time for Turkey to leave NATO.
People who say this have zero clue about Geopolitics. They are a complicated and problematic country (much like Israel) but pushing Turkey away as an ally would be a disaster for Europe.
Most particularly because it would push them into the arms of Russia and/or China pretty firmly. Either would not be good for Europe as a whole, for numerous reasons.
Push Turkey into the arms of Russian or China
Economically, yes. This devil spawn we have presiding over our heads has fucked it up maybe irreversibly bad. We have no proper industry left to depend on. Let alone the braindrain, now even the average person feels no ties to the governing body ruling these lands now.
Culturally, there is no way that happening. Leftist half of the country think very similar to European libertarian ideologies. Some of them are in awe of European countries, some are vary because of attributing most of the current Middle East and Africa instability to European colonialism, but nevertheless this half is a mostly leftist in all human rights issues at least. That is why they have no illusion of siding with Russian or Chinese ideologies, regardless of their economic views. The conservative part, as all uneducated conservative sides in the world, have bigoted views on human rights and flicker from side to side depending on the day’s propaganda, but they have a deep distrust towards both Russia and China. They usually don’t like the west, either, but that as I said will depend on if Erdoğan is hiddenly begging for money from the west and licking their boots or if the elections are closing in and Erdoğan needs to show “he is a strongman”.
NATO alliance benefits both Turkey’s interests closely, and the Europe’s. Canton alliance would be even a harder pill to swallow for Turkey than NATO alliance, and losing Turkey as the buffer zone against the flow of eastern immigrants/buffer against hundreds of militant and/or terrorist organizations would put overall NATO/European Union on the frontline to these elements.
As for not accepting Turkey into EU, yeah that is a given, especially with this guy taking every step away for the last 20 years from meeting the conditions for joining.
Meh, Nato is not supposed to be a community of shared values (like the EU) but of shared purpose in countering the soviets (or Russians, these days). Nato being in control of the Bosporus strait via Turkey helps contain the Black Sea fleet.
As long as they are a boon to Nato they should stay in. We don’t need to be friends to work together - it helps, though.
But, how well has the “let’s not anger Turkey otherwise they’ll get closer to Russia” approach worked out? They’ve been literally getting closer and closer to Russia, they’re still denying the Armenian genocide and are helping Azerbaijan commit a new one, they didn’t hesitate to destabilize Europe by weaponizing refugees to help the far-right rise to power, and they’ve been illegally occupying part of Cyprus.
So again, how well had the “let’s not alienate them” strategy worked out?
Oh I’m not saying “don’t alienate them”. I’m saying we can argue with them and dislike Turkey but that has nothing to do whether they belong in Nato or not. As long as they keep Russia’s Black Sea fleet inside and the rest of their fleet outside they are “far enough” from Russia.
You want them to align more closely with Russia and/or China instead? That’s what would happen if they were kicked out of NATO, and NATO would lose control of the Bosporus
It’s too important as a strategic location. We must protect the Bosphorus and Dardanelles from the Golden Horde and NATO membership is a strong deterrent.
Plus, Istanbul is cool. The Hagia Sophia and Blue Mosque are worth going to war over. Bodrum is super nice and historic. The first mausoleum (for King Mausus) is/was there. Göbeklitepe is maybe the most important archaeological site being explored.
Not to turn this into a tourism ad but visit historic Turkey, your NATO ally, and feel history come alive™️
You can’t really make a country leave NATO. And they’d like to stay to get more influence and security.
Wonder how Tucker Carlson’s old fans are going to react to this. He was pretty clear in his admiration of this authoritarian strongman.
But Christian Nationalists also wants Israel to succeed so that Jesus can come back and send everyone else to eternal torment.
How to address the cognitive dissonance?
Wait what?
Do they not understand that Israel is full of Jews? Is this another layer of cognitive dissonance, because I would figure white nationalists hate Jews?
Well, not that it matters much, but not all Christian Nationalists are explicitly white Nationalists. I think they’re fine with Messianic Judaism, for example.
The point of “Messianic Judaism” is to make Jews convert to Christianity. It has nothing to do with actual Judaism. It’s people LARPing to “save souls.”
Oh, I know.
I was speaking towards the ethnicity, not the beliefs.
To address any cognitive dissonance would first require them to have some sort of cognition.
Liar.
