Turkey chose to develop a large defense industry. There were restrictions on them acquiring some US weapons (even though they are NATO member) but that wasn't the motivating factor, it was a political choice to develop large defense sector.

Other countries like Iran however, do develop their own drones because of sanctions

The strict tensions imposed after Turkey's intervention in/invasion of northern Cyprus in 1974 played a key role in the development of the Turkish defense industry.

I presume you're talking about Turkey/Türkiye.

If so, do you think it makes a difference that Turkey is a NATO member, and on (relatively) good terms with the Western powers?

For all the ideological differences and geopolitcal nervousness I don't think the US or EU see themselves as potentially fighting against Turkey, and so they don't feel the need to go to the trouble of strict sanctions or sabotaging local tech.

> and on (relatively) good terms with the Western powers?

In recent years the relationship between Turkey and Western countries has been OK-ish (though far from stellar, see the S-400-related tensions or the French-Trukish tension in the Mediterranean).

But if you look at it on a longer perspective, the relationship used to be very tense, first there was the Cyprus crisis leading to pretty harsh western sanctions on military equipment, and then the cold war between Turkey and Greece in the Aegean see, with occasional real fire air combat and casualties.

They work for countries that kneecap themselves by being at the whims of capital and the market. Countries that don't constrain themselves like that can laugh at sanctions because they don't matter in that context.

Who cares about 35% inflation when you got your own drones to bomb Kurds, am I right? Which btw. was the original reason why Obama didn't want to give Turkey combat capable drones. He wasn't sassy or tried to curb competition. The US presumed (correctly with the benefit of hindsight) that they would be used to go after supposed PKK positions inside and outside Turkey. Sanctions do work, but when an opponent is hell-bent on their objective, they will always be willing to sacrifice in order to attain their goals nonetheless. Even at the cost of their own population. You can see the same thing in Russia: They are literally bleeding their middle class into poverty under all those sanctions just to keep going in Ukraine.

>Who cares about 35% inflation when you got your own drones to bomb Kurds, am I right?

Orthogonal. You can have 35% inflation AND no drones or good arms in general.

Which is worse, especially if this lack makes it easier to get invaded or "regime changed" into a failed style.

>Which btw. was the original reason why Obama didn't want to give Turkey combat capable drones.

The welfare of the Kurds, or using them as a proxy force against Syria, Iran, and abandoning them whenever convenient?

>You can have 35% inflation AND no drones or good arms in general.

I guess you can always be worse off as a country, no argument there.

>if this lack makes it easier to get invaded or "regime changed" into a failed style.

I don't understand what you mean. Are you saying it would be better if a country gets US weapons while being under threat of being "regime changed" into an enemy? Because that somehow seems even worse. And that's literally what the US was afraid of in Ukraine.

>The welfare of the Kurds

I suppose they don't care if the bombs are dropped by Turkish or US drones. But at least the sanctions delayed it by ~half a decade, so there's that.

You said "who cares about 35% inflation when you got your own drones"

Based on the parent you were replying to, I take it to imply: "don't make drones to avoid sanctions (even if it means not having arms), lest you get inflation", the latter of which you paint as the worse outcome.

So, the point I made above is that if not having drones/arms etc makes it easier to be regime changed/turned into failed state, then, yes, 35% inflation would still be a small cost to pay to avoid it.

I still don't get it. Are you saying that we also shouldn't send weapons to Ukraine because there is a real threat that they will end up in the enemy's hands? Or are you saying we should definitely send weapons because the opposite is a guaranteed regime change? It's kind of a lose-lose from a US POV (just like Turkey) and it still misses the actual point: Both Ukraine and Turkey will do anything to achieve their goals, they don't care what it takes to get there, even if it comes at enormous cost to their own population.

???

I haven’t seen the narrative that Ukraine is winning the war for at least 2 years. You should maybe choose better news sources, there’s a huge amount of very accurate reporting on it.

Additionally, the Russian economy is a wartime economy, which runs hot till it collapses or wins. It’ll be fine till it’s not, but it’s very hard to predict what that point is.

Nobody is saying that Ukraine is winning the war. Like, genuinely, go find me any reputable news source saying anything of the like from the past 3 years.

Russia is definitely losing it though. Morons got themselves into a war they cannot win. Nothing Ukraine will accept can be considered a victory for the strongman dictator who needs a victory. And it's obvious now that regardless of brutality and war crimes, Russia cannot force Ukraine to accept their terms, nor can they actually occupy the whole country And they only have multiple times the population and economy and army.

> Their economy is dying crashing but it is actually doing better than most of Europe.

Based on what? Look up the parable of the broken window to understand why some of their economic numbers are looking decent. Them losing most of their export markets, replaced by others that pay less for the same stuff (India, China, buy discount oil and gas because Russia doesn't have that many options who to sell to) isn't a benefit for Russia.

> You should stop following western main stream media as that is as controlled in its own way as Chinese or Russian state owned media. You just have an illusion of freedoms.

This is an insulting false equivalence that can only come from a profound lack of knowledge or a profound personal/financial interest.

"Mainstream media* in the "west" is very varied. From the Financial Times to the Guardian to New York Times to Le Monde to whatever you can think of. You would never see Russian or Chinese state owned media criticising the dear leader nor the regime. Le Monde don't even flinch reporting on various political scandals of French politicians, including the sitting Prime Minister. Nor will they shy away from an apology and correction if they got something wrong. Same goes for most reputable and quality "mainstream" "western" media.

You'll never see anything of the like in China or Russia. Especially in the later, journalists literally get murdered for reporting on the regime. (Novaya Gazeta have had how many employees killed).

Western freedoms are for themselves not for the rest of the world. Israel is committing a genocide has been killing Iranian civilians with not a peep from the west in years. Even in the current war Israel was attacking and killing civilians and the so called Iran the axis of evil only attacked military and intelligence buildings but the world it to believe that Iran is the bad guy. Which mainstream media outlet or politician has the guts to say anything against Israel anyone that says anything is removed.

Even the recent NY mayoral primary the question being asked again to a Muslim candidate were will you visit Israel does Israel have right to exist like what has that got to do with being NY mayor. Now if they asked if Jewish citizen have a right to live in NY and feel safe etc that would be valid question wtf has Israel got to do with it.

When I see how many people refuse to see the glaring inconsistencies in western propaganda like the ones you described and accept the apologetics because they feel an affinity to their tribe I stop wondering how China and Russia or indeed any other authoritarian regime ended up the way they did.

Really, the only reason the Kurds are bombed are themselves. They do bad decision after bad decision constantly.

> They work for countries that kneecap themselves by being at the whims of capital and the market.

Typically it actually looks like the opposite. When I look at, eg, North Korea or Iran - if I were going to try and make them wealthy it is mostly internal policies that are the problem and not external ones.

If North Korea set itself up with single digit % company and income tax combined with a strong rule of law, local education programs and a liberal economy it would barely matter what sanctions were imposed on them. A tide of money would flow in and they'd eventually be wealthy under their own power anyway if not. Although it isn't obvious why anyone would sanction a small well run country; there is a correlation between sanctions and incompetent governance.

This is the most profoundly arrogant thing I’ve read in a while, kudos! It’s hard to stand out on the internet these days

Most of the sanctions are whac-a-mole game played by the West (mostly by USA): as soon as one of the peripheral countries starts developing its economy, gains more wealth, starts to produce something the competes with products of Western companies, or attempts to avoid use of USD (because it allows immense enrichment of USA simply by printing it in whatever quantities), soon there starts:

- firstly, media attack ("they're dictatorship!", "they're genociding someone", etc), preparing population for stricter measures

- secondly, color revolution, which, if successful, puts puppet malleable government in power, and makes the country ultra-poor (most of the countries, where color revolutions staged by US/West succeeded, became significantly poorer)

- if color revolution didn't work, there's always an option to just bomb the country, because it's always ignored if all the international treaties and laws are ignored if USA or Israel bomb any other nation.

The US has a strong record of interfering with foreign countries in way that advantage their interests, but at the same time the fact that you bring the “color revolution” phrase is a strong marker that you are reading way too much Russian (imperialist) propaganda disguised as anti-imperialism, which really is no better than feeding on the neoconservative narrative.

> They can't create any meaningful gap for a very long time.

That highly depends on the size and natural resource available to the country.

To play devils advocate, a lack of sanctions also allows countries to advance technology at a tremendous velocity.

The Ford Motor Company's dealings in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union significantly helped the adoption of mass production in those countries.

What country? Your website is out of Germany. Germany is in NATO.

Hetzner is still a thing.

Judging by his name, Turkey

Okay, in that case it’s not a good example because Turkey is a NATO country.

Which didn't stop the US and other western countries to embargo them after their invasion of northern Cyprus (yes it was in 1974, but it's when the Turkish domestic defense sector really started so it's not irrelevant even if it's 50 years old).

Survivor bias

Turkey’s defense advances took decades and came with major setbacks

Not to mention many NATO incompatibilities

Just look at all the other sanctioned countries

You're just moving the goalpost here.

And if you want to look at other sanctioned countries, just look at how NK or Iran's industry fares compared to their economic peers …

I’m not moving it just showing how Turkey is different when compared to other sanctioned non NATO countries.

This is such a cliché, a Turk living in Germany on a German standard of living, but being proudly nationalistic of Turkey, even if Turkey's president has made very questionable decisions and has been a negative to the economy through blatant corruption and mismanagement. Oh, and he's also an authoritarian.

I have never been judged so hard in a very long time, thank you. You get extra points for making assumptions about my location, living conditions and political views from a single IP address.

That was really great. Kudos.

BTW, you can't be more wrong about me than that comment, even if you tried harder(er).

We normally don't talk about that here, but seriously, prejudice is running high in this instance.

To be fair, it wasn't discussed until you made it part of your identity in your GP.

I intentionally left the county name out in the beginning, actually.

I also semi-knowingly didn’t answer direct comments about country, either. To not devolve it into politics too much.

On the other hand, I’m not bothered by it. I just wanted to point out that making assumptions from my homepage’s IP address is wrong.

We all say rude things sometimes, and that’s OK. We’re human. No hard feelings here.

Lastly, to be honest, I neither flagged nor downvoted that comment.

It’s in your profile and pretty easily inferred from your comment when you compile the two or more pieces of information together. We can’t blame people for that

Doesn't matter. I'm not hiding where I live or my nationality. It's intended to be composable. But making it composable and putting it plain and center are different things. My intention is not to hide, but to sound as neutral as possible, because my intention was to give an example, independent of the country name. If I knew other examples from other countries equally well, I'd happily add those, without the country names, too.

On the other hand, when you click some of the links in my homepage, it becomes pretty evident that I don't live in Germany. So, if somebody cares to check my homepage's server's geolocation, I expect them to check a couple of links, too.

So, the thing I was pointing that my homepage's server's location doesn't imply anything about where I live or the conditions of my life. I'm not bothered that somebody figured out my nationality, which country I'm talking about, etc.

I'm just baffled how somebody can make that amount of false assumptions from an IP address. Plain and simple.

inferred from username and stated facts, Turkey.

Sorry I didn’t pick up on it. Not familiar with Turkish names.

People can host websites in countries other than the one they live in.

It took me ~10 seconds to figure out the guy is Turkish and talking about Turkish defence industry.

If this was true then countries could just impose import restrictions if they wanted to "advance their tech at tremendous velocity".

It also depends if the country has a realistic capability to catch up with their own tech. So for Congo it would probably be a bad move. China is a different story imho.

This is called "import substitution" and was incredibly popular in the age before neoliberalism. If your country is rich today you probably did a lot of that in the past.

Which they do all the time. Import substitution is a thing. It works.