“Are you a Turk or a citizen of Russia?” the Russian government asks of its millions of Turkish citizens. There didn’t use to be a contradiction but now that Russia is busily hate-mongering against Turkey there is:
Thus far, the adversarial, identity-driven turn in Russian politics has avoided drawing domestic dividing lines beyond the question of who supports Putin, and who doesn’t. . . Until now. Now, the Russian government is demanding that 12 million Russian citizens of Turkic ethnicity to choose between their citizenship and their ethnic identity.
That’s exactly what Russia needed. Yet another ethnic minority to hate and persecute.
I just want people who started saying, after the 11/13 terror attacks in Paris, that maybe it is a good idea to get over the West’s opposition with Russia and involve Russians in a fight against ISIS to start noticing that any, ANY attempt to flirt with Russia’s current regime results in something like this.
Hollande travels to Russia, Obama chats with Putin at the G20 – it all looks innocent enough. And then today, Russian airplanes targeted a peaceful marketplace in Syria, killing at least 30 people (in an area with zero ISIS presence, obviously). And a very peaceful minority in Russia gets singled out for harassment for no reason whatsoever.
It might be fun to fantasize about how great it would be if Russians defeated ISIS. But when you engage in this fantasy, you contribute to the environment where these fuckers feel emboldened to kill more people.
At some point, the insane desire of so many Western do-gooders to lend a sympathetic ear to Putinoid shit needs to end. I know everybody is in the grip of their teenage rebellion against the Cold War. But isn’t it time to grow up already and notice reality?
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