Bulletins and News Discussion from May 29th to June 4th, 2023 - Not Erdogone Yet

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.

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Rumors of British involvement in recent terrorist attacks against Russia:
According to Ukrainian sources, the increasing frequency of long-range missile and UAV strikes deep into Russian territory, against apparently non-military targets, is the result of a demand by the British. In this way, they believe, Moscow can be provoked to launch an offensive.
Since the possibilities for a successful offensive by the AFU are assessed as dubious even by the West, the British would like to add "dynamism" to the combat operations by luring our troops out of defence and forcing them to suffer casualties. Which in turn, according to their calculations, could destabilise the situation in Russia.
Source
- British military planning likes to operate on a moving front. British training is very fluid and an absolutely massive amount of operational decision making is left up to well trained officers on front lines.
  A very flat front of infantry with artillery behind like the strategy Russia is using is completely out of the comfort zone of British military planners. They want fast moving lines where lots of daring operations can be planned and distributed by higher command. This combat zone has very few holes in Russian lines so there's fuck all interesting strategy that can be implemented other than frontline meeting frontline and grinding it out.
  The accusation is plausible to me.
  
  Leave it to the British officer Corps to want to still behave like they're riding fucking horses into battle
  
  Yeah it is kinda like that. I think it's partly cultural too maybe? I dunno, there's a whole thing with British military doing really weird operations that don't seem practical or normal to anyone else but they make it work, it seems engrained into the culture. Class is still deeply embedded in the British military too, officers have a lot of private or grammar schoolboys from well off backgrounds while rank and file are working class. That whole shit in Kingsman with the classism in the spy testing segments? If you take out the spy/secret agent antics that's not an uncommon phenomenon in officer school.
  
  I'm passingly familiar with some of the shitshow that is the British armed forces, essentially, blood-based command system due to the contacts I've made over the years among former Commonwealth soldiers.
  Probably one of the most absurd things I've heard is how there are still Commonwealth regiments with what are essentially royal celebrity-mascots, with things like the "Duke of Yorkshire puddings' Own" Regiment in like the ass end of New Zealand actually being concidered as a retinue to an inbred blueblood dipshit. Literally out of the 18th century clown shit yo
  
  I have relatives directly involved with overseeing and planning the emergency security plans of the king lmao. The royals make fairly regular appearances with the military. All the traditions have not changed since the 18th century at all, and it provides a fairly direct link between military loyalties and the crown. In fact, if anything were ever to kick off in this country I would expect the military to side with the monarch over parliament.
  
  If the uk's military was still a conscription service I'd say the best chance you lot would have is playing off the literally inbuilt class antagonism in between the aristocratic officers and the lads, but your volunteer lads probably take great pleasure in serving their hereditary betters
  
  They have very good PR. Better than the cops. Not really helped by various deployments being secondary to the great satan so leftist pushback has typically been focused on the US military rather than our own.

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