Peshmerga ain't no joke

[DinoDoc]

Could the Peshmerga use an Alcubierre Drive to go back in time and crush ISIS before they were even born? Would this make baby Spock cry?

EA would sue whoever did it for copyright infringement.

[Hauldren Collider]

**** yeah Kurds

They're awesome.

[My Wife Hates CIV]

i dunno... seen hundreds of beheadings on best gore... all the dudes doing the beheadings look just like the dudes being beheaded. i dunno, makes you wonder when you see one... wonder who that guy has killed as he bleeds out.

this is one messed up world we live it.

[Felch]

Kurdistan

[Bereta_Eder]

Turks have three still "hot" enemies, Kurds, Armenians and Greeks... instability is definitely not working in their favour.

i would give half of my right nut for greece to fecking fix its internal problems first than even touch the hair of a turk.

[Bereta_Eder]

btw the yazidi story is also a cool story

[Bereta_Eder]

they dont wear blue, they're basically zoroastrians from persian times and they fake imitate christian/muslim customs so as not to get into trouble.
the closest to today's zoroastranism as i've gathered from reading an article.

kurds have always suffered from intra fighting. even PKK wasn't able to unite all of them. but there are tens of millions of them so they form a critical mass.
with a semi autonomous state already in place, maybe that will give them the incentive to actually get their stuff together but it isn't very likely.
OTOH "external" pressures will guide them towards that goal because it serves wider geopolitical interests in the region, so in actuality things do look good for them.

erdogan won in the last elections. he is giving mixed signals. on one hand banning youtube, twitter etc, on the other letting serious orthodox liturgies take place in turkey. OTOH announcing he will turn agia sophia to a mosque, on the other letting the great generational school maybe reopen (a big school of byzantine/hellenic tradition).

very mixed signals.

[Sava]

**** yeah Kurds

They're awesome.

I don't believe for a second that you give a good god damn about the kurds.

[Dinner]

My impressions of the Peshmerga, when I worked with them in Iraq 10 years ago, was that they certainly had better morale and willingness to fight than the Iraqi National Guard who ran away at the first sign of violence. That said, the Peshmerga had very limited weaponry, often just an AK-47 for each man and maybe an RPG or two per company, and their level of training and equipment was quite low. Still, they believed in their cause and weren't afraid to actually fight for it and that is something. They were also much more secular and moderate as Kurdish society has a lot of factions and subgroups so their unity government had to be moderate as they had to keep everyone from die hard Marxists to free market capitalists to wannabe authoritarians all in one unity government. They'd figured out they had to work together or die separately and that was strong motivation to compromise and work together for the greater good.

[Bereta_Eder]

when the modern greek "nation" was made, the intra fighting was so huge it kept threatening its existance again and again.
fractions against fractions etc a unifying aspect thought by the "great powers" (sic) was a bavarian king.
king otto if i remember correctly.
as decades passed and passed more big blocks of power were consolidated but even at the asia minor disaster there was intra fighting (intense and violent) and even today you can say there is.
a unifying aspect did exist though (religion/language) not that it made things more polite
national consensus (thin and fragile) was only present during big wars, the balkan ones and the world wars

[Bereta_Eder]

also turkey and greece came almost to war over kurds in the past. (long story)

[Bereta_Eder]

that was back in 1999. i was here and i remember it.

greece basically ended up with the leader of the PKK, a marxist kurdish group that has been on the for front of kurdish independence (and labeled terrorist by EU, US, Turkey, Israel).

russia didnt want him, italy didnt want him but somehow some elements inside the greek military managed to bring him in greece (that's treason right there, because you're not following official commands)

when turkey found out that he was in greece they basically threatened with war. greece wouldnt give him up because that meant losing face but the greek gov. was in dire straits because it had the US turkey and israel breathing down its neck.

the kurdish leader was evacuated to kenya where mossad agents caught him and brought him to turkey.

how times change

[OneFootInTheGrave]

If you want to have something done - you need to have Israel do it. Capturing Kurdish leaders for Turks.

[Bereta_Eder]

I dont know how greek media were portraying the whole geopolitical situation because back then greece was "socialist" (sic) had humungous growth rates each year and was deemed the poster boy of the EU. back then the sense was that turkey and israel were immensly close. that was the media interpratation
but basically it was a different greece. and maybe a different world

[Dinner]

when the modern greek "nation" was made, the intra fighting was so huge it kept threatening its existance again and again.
fractions against fractions etc a unifying aspect thought by the "great powers" (sic) was a bavarian king.
king otto if i remember correctly.
as decades passed and passed more big blocks of power were consolidated but even at the asia minor disaster there was intra fighting (intense and violent) and even today you can say there is.
a unifying aspect did exist though (religion/language) not that it made things more polite
national consensus (thin and fragile) was only present during big wars, the balkan ones and the world wars

With Kurds even religion isn't unifying as they're spread out from Armenia to Persia to Turkey to Arabia. Most are Sunni but a large minority are Shia'a while there are minorities of Sufis, Yzidies, and even Christians. Language is a unifying factor but even there because they've been in different countries for so long there is a large amount of regional dialects.