Russia in the Middle East

[comrade_general]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3331558/Turkey-shoots-fighter-jet-Syrian-border-Local-media-footage-flaming-plane-crashing-trees.html

Let Russia carve up ISIS-ally-Turkey for dinner.

[Clockwork]

Rus gon fuk dem up.

[Jubal]

The Turkish government certainly aren't good guys, but I'm pretty sure I don't think the Russians are either, so I hope this won't lead to anything escalating too much. It doesn't look like Russia are actually going to do anything much, anyhow, possibly cut off travel visas or something but Putin seems to be in "not losing face" mode not "deliver ultimatum" mode.

[comrade_general]

I'd def ally with the Soviets though.

[Jubal]

Well, that at least can't harm anyone too much given the USSR ceased existing about a quarter of a century ago now... 

[comrade_general]

Oh did it now? Tell that to Putin.

[Jubal]

I think there are differences between Putin's new Russia and the USSR, even if geopolitically they're similar the underlying rationale is very different. More "god and the motherland", less "workers of the world unite", and so on. Not to mention that modern Russia is much less well resourced and less capable of heavy-duty power projection than the USSR was at its height, the geopolitical buffer zone has gone from "everything in eastern Europe" to "we're playing havoc with like 100 miles of Ukranian border territory". No soviet would have been seen dead claiming to be the heir to Byzantium, but that's pretty core to Putin's ideology. I guess it has impacts, too; Putin makes claims around protecting Russian interests, not the interests of a global class, so beyond the Russian-speaking world he has less ideological pretext for foreign wars (which of course suits him fine, given he's mainly interested in being dictator/pseudo-Emperor of Russia and keeping a grip on power there).

[comrade_general]

Still Soviets.

[Glaurung]

Let Russia carve up ISIS-ally-Turkey for dinner.

I think I must be missing something: Turkey is vehemently opposed to IS.

[Jubal]

There have been allegations that Turkey hasn't been pulling its weight, especially with issues around them refusing access to their territory (for the reasons one would expect) to Kurdish militias, and not doing enough to cut off IS supply lines that have often involved smuggling people and goods through Turkey. I think some commentators also suspect that Turkey is so opposed to Assad that they'd rather keep him off-balance even if that means not destroying IS as efficiently as it could.

I think calling them an IS ally is stretching it, but it would be reasonable to say that they don't have the rapid defeat of IS as their sole primary goal in the way that it seems to be becoming the main goal of many of their NATO allies.

[Glaurung]

OK, I stand corrected. Certainly I can see that it gives Erdogan some leverage to have IS contained but active beyond the Turkish border. On the other hand the Turkish government takes the country's territorial integrity very seriously , so they would stamp very hard on any IS movement across the border, and I'm fairly sure there are major religious differences between IS and the majority Turkish population as well. And they are (apparently) fed up with hosting over a million refugees.

[Jubal]

Also true - IS certainly would love to have the strength to take on Turkey, given that they want to conquer Constantinople (this is apparently a necessary step in causing the apocalypse, along with defeating the armies of Rome, which they may have even more difficulty with).

[comrade_general]

Putin says that Turkey is buying oil from ISIS.

[Clockwork]

Putin is the only political player with backbone. He might actually back up kicking the bejesus out of people.

[Glaurung]

Putin says that Turkey is buying oil from ISIS.

I wouldn't regard Putin as a reliable source, unfortunately.