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Comment by vr46 | Hacker News Reader

Everything has a price

The problem may very well be that Putin has bought off or compromised Erdogan in some form. Then there is no price high enough.

Realistically Erdogan doesn't have the power to stop this.

I doubt it, the Turks have been one of Ukraine’s strongest supporters, sending Bayraktar drones, closing their airspace to Russian flights, and closing the entrance to the Black Sea from the Mediterranean to Russian warships (all warships tbf). They’re no friend of Russia.

This appears to just be about Sweden and Finland’s support for the Kurds, some of who are in Iraq and some in Turkey. Turkey doesn’t want them forming a new and potentially hostile nation on its border, and doesn’t want any support for that from within NATO.

Unfortunately for the Kurds they’re probably about to get thrown under the bus, since Finland and Sweden are now more concerned about the much larger, aggressive, unstable, nuclear-armed rogue state on their own border.

I think you are missing a lot of the military cooperation between Russia and Turkey. Turkey is buying weapons from Russia. Also, Erdogan stopped delivering the tank-busting missiles for the TB2 drone, which is a big deal. There really is no replacement. The Hellfire missile is too heavy and the Americans now have delivered unguided rockets retrofitted with a laser-seeking head but which can't bust tanks...

So, Turkey and Russia might not exactly be friends. Erdogan and Putin is another topic.

Also, be wary of what Erdogan and his people say. He's about as trustworthy as Putin, and when he calls those organizations "Terrorists" or that Sweden and Finland support them, then that's actually quite far from the truth and he wants something much less palatable.

This is very likely. Erdogan really isn't much more than a thug, they always have a price, and often have dirty secrets they don't want laundered.

Sweden is lucky that Erdogan is in power and he'll bend and do a 180 in a month max. If anyone else was in that position, this would never happen. This topic is probably the only thing that has this much mainstream support since Erdogan came to power.

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