Russia says jet shot down near Turkey-Syria border

[Igel]

148. Here's one bit of hypocrisy.

Putin's gone on record as supporting Russians everywhere. If you speak Russian, if you feel that you're part of the Russian world or culture, you're Russian and Russia has an obligation to defend you.

It's been used to threaten the Baltics, it was justification for Crimea, and it's been invoked numerous times in the Donbass.

Erdogan said that Russia was bombing the Turks' kinsmen. Putin should understand this reasoning very, very well--it's the same ethnicist reasoning that Russia uses to say it's justified in military operations and covert or not-so-covert support elsewhere.

When the Turks settled in Asia Minor, when the Ottoman Empire practiced its ethnic policies, groups settled (or were resettled) in various places. Ethnicities didn't always have contiguous borders, and often the Ottomans would resettle "safe" people among renegades to help pacify the area, or pick up and move trouble makers to spread them and out neutralize them. Circassians were moved to Syria and Lebanon, Armenians distributed even before the genocide, etc., etc. Turkmen were also picked up and moved, or felt free to move.

It was an old Horde trick, as well. One that Russians also picked up from the Muslim Horde. When Novgorod fell to Ivan the Terrible, he scattered the citizens across N. Russia to avoid a concentration of opposition.