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Comment by srg0 | Hacker News Reader

Turkey is a NATO member, but it didn't join the international sanctions.

They're certainly not Russia-aligned. They've never liked each other, and Turkey has been crucial in strengthening Ukraine's defense with their Bayraktars.

AFAIK, one of the closest calls for an outright NATO-Russia war came when Turkey shot down a Russian fighter jet.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Russian_Sukhoi_Su-24_shoo...

They are not aligned, but they deal with the Ukraine conflict in a very pragmatic way. On the one side they are delivering drones to Ukraine, which have proven to be one of the more effective weapons agains the Russian army, on the other hand they will accept Russian tourists into the country this summer.

IMHO Erdogan still owes Putin a favor for being tipped off on the 2016 Turkish coup d'état attempt.

Did the coup even exist? It looked like something faked/invented just to get rid of the opposition.

What's the Ukraine conflict?

Do you mean the war that Russia wages against Ukraine?

No way would they oppose Finland and Sweden joining.

I hope not. Just saying that their stance towards Russia is ambivalent.

But they closed the Turkish Straits.

> But they closed the Turkish Straits.

But they didn't. Turkey only upheld the conditions of the Montreux Convention:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreux_Convention_Regarding_...

Huh? Turkey has the right but not the obligation to close the straits in times of war. And they exercised that right:

> Around February 27–28, Turkey refused permission for 3 of 4 Russian warships to enter the Black Sea, as 3 did not have a home base in the Black Sea.

There's a subtle difference. The straits weren't "closed", one of the Russian ships was allowed passage because its home port was registered as Sevastopol prior to the present conflict.

"pursuant to the terms of the agreement, Turkey cannot block Russian warships based in the Black Sea from returning to their registered base."

I don't understand what point you are trying to make. Are you saying Turkey should have gone against the rules based international order and blocked Black Sea based ships?

Turkey was under no obligation to do anything. Yet they closed the straits to Russian ships to the extent that they possibly could.

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