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.
Russia 2-3 days ago hit Ukraine’s military intelligence center — Putin
This feels like a notable escalation and the drone attack on Moscow feels like panic.
With Zaluzhny in the wind (hiding, injured dead, whatever), the loss of bakhmut, and a spring offensive so weak people think it hasn't happened yet, could we be seeing the collapse of the Ukrops?
Avdiivka seems pretty secure but if it falls before September I'd see that as a sign that the UAF are doneski.
you mentioned the collapse of Ukraine, you fool. now you've extended the war by another 18 months
2030: The Russians have secured the check-in booth at Uncle Vlad’s motel 6 after 23 months of intense fighting
Good. The longer the war goes on the more dead nazis.
EDIT: Sorry. Apparently the joke wasn't clear... or in particularly good taste.
And the more dead regular conscripts, the more displaced civilians, the more destruction of people's homes and livelihoods, the more risk of nuclear escalation.
And more cringe on social media
I was making a bad joke. I get that killing nazis is an insignificant positive in the grand scale of what is otherwise nothing but a negative but I've been thinking.... I might have missed something but I think my logic is sound.
This war was avoidable but due to capital's pathological need to squeeze profit from even a bad investment a war and the resulting destruction was inevitable. NATO was itching for a place to burn all its old stocks of weapons and equipment and to test new ones. The west would have used these weapons somewhere. Population density is lower (and Nazi sentiment is higher) in Ukraine than most other possible battlegrounds. Is this not the best place for a war?
Relatively speaking the civilian casualty count in Ukraine is low. As the conflict goes on the rate of civilian casualties has slowed. The most dangerous time for civilians is always the beginning of a war. If capitalists using their weapons is inevitable stopping one war that is past its peak civilian death rate would allow another war to start. The lack of deaths in the period between conflicts is not worth the risk of a more "normal" civilian death rate like we have seen in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, etc.
TLDR: In a world where capitalists have invested in weapons of war civilian harm is inevitable. Keeping the war in Ukraine going is the lesser evil.
:downbear:
Absolute shit tier take. This proxy war is killing, maiming and displacing so many innocent people whose only sin is living in a place where great powers have decided to duke it out. How many civilian deaths does killing one ukro nazi buy while still being good?
:downbear:
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I don't know. I do know that there are rumours of NATO ambulance planes leaving destinations near the Ukrainian border.