>

I consider the attempted coup the military doing what Atatürk intended, restoring democracy. 
But they failed, so we’ll never know what their plans exactly were.
That guy is a pain in the arse >

Damn that Turkey has to be located where it's an important piece of geography. >

Turkey is a fine country with fine people, their leader though 🥴 >

that can be said... for a lot of countries >

Iran and Russia come to mind >

Ahh I don't know about that. Have you seen any of the videos asking regular Russians about the war? I've seen quite a few of them and they're honestly disturbing. They'll say things like they hope everyone in the west dies via their nukes, or Ukrainians aren't even human so the war/war crimes don't matter, and so on. I know there are good Russians too, they're in the videos as well. But it's overwhelmingly hateful in general.  
"Well that's because of how their government has treated them terribly and fed them disinformation for decades+" Yeah, maybe. But it doesn't change the harsh reality of things >

All the good ones are in Russian gulags by now >

Well, and abroad. The Russian diaspora is growing quite large. >

Plenty Russians abroad that are drinking the Putin Kool-Aid too. I used to have a few on FB. Obviously I'd be anti-Russian, they said, because I'm Polish so I believe all the propaganda against them. These guys are knee deep in the bullshit, as they live in a western country and enjoy all the freedoms and benefits we have to offer here. >

By all means, if they love the current state of Russia, they have all of the freedom in the world to go back. Can't guarantee they'd be able to change their minds once they're there. >

Can't wait when Putin and Erdogan die >

There will always be another despot wanting to rise - even in long-established democracies like the US.  Strong and enforced rules preventing this kind of thing are essential to long-term peace globally. >

Yea but you need the fuckung despots to be dead so you can get people in power who can establish such rules. Otherwise the same despots will establish their own. >

Thus forever repeating. So it goes >

Turkey is going to milk this as long as possible.  Erdogan is such an evil bastard. >

And Trump kowtowed to him and we let our Kurdish allies die as a result.
Edit: typo >

Trump committed the war crime of perfidy on that day.  Another horrible crime he got away with because there is no justice when rich people break the law. >

We in Sweden believe in democracy and the separation of government and the courts. We will not sacrifice our democracy for Erdogan. If our politicians had any balls they would simply say no to Erdogan and tell the world how a proper democracy works. >

Personally I find trading Turkey for Sweden plus Finland a very good deal. The only value Turkey gives to the alliance is control of access to the Black Sea under the Montereaux Convention. Unfortunately, there’s no mechanism to boot them from the alliance. >

Hopefully the people behind the scenes don't give Erdogan too much to make the deal to go through. Sounds like he's stalling for concessions. Having Finland and Sweden in NATO is fundamental to what NATO is all about. Control of the Blatic, support to the Baltic states if the Suwalki corridor is even taken, and NATO forces bottlenecking the Kola peninsula. Plus, there's Finland's experience with Russia and Sweden is experienced in developing modern weapons. Anyone trying to stop that from happening goes against the core concept of NATO. >

The only reason NATO accepted Turkey into its ranks is because they served a strategic geographic role in being the only pro-West country (at the time) to have a geographic border with Russia. 
For Turkey, the reason (at the time) they submitted their bid to join NATO was because they were under threat of Soviet invasion. The West graced them will full membership instead of "defensive cooperation" was because they supplied troops to fight with the West during the Korean War, and again, served strategic geographic importance. The U.S. would go on to house their nukes in Turkey to keep pointed right at Moscow. >

They were also a weak (but strengthening) democracy at the time. 
It was thought that membership would stabilize and strengthen the institutions, like with the Greeks that were simultaneously admitted. 
The same thing happened with Portugal and Spain too. >

To be fair, they were making a best effort attempt.  Hell, they even had a tradition of, whenever the politicians were fucking things up too much, the military staging a coup, calming things down, and then holding new elections and abiding by the results.
It's one of the reasons it's plausible that the coup attempt against Erdogan might have been legit, and not just something he made up in order to launch a purge.