Alan, you think of visa issuing as a friendly service, and that honors you. In reality in third world countries it is made as difficult as possible. Part of it is a centralized process with exclusively personal, face-to-face interviews. Costs and time are important factors in keeping people even from trying. Other "first World" countries are not much better.
There were PKK graffitis in videos showing Mandibsch after the YPG takeover. Turkish Kurds take great interest in what their brothers do across the border. Erdogan is known to be paranoid about Kurdish autonomy/self determination. I wouldn't be surprised if antagonism to the Kurds, shared between the Assad-regime and Erdogan was a significant contributing factor to the move towards Russia. Also Russia can be expected to care less about Erdogan's affinity to the Muslim Brotherhood-wing of islamism. Together with the economic interest shared with Russia that makes his move very convincing.
So an international conflict with Kurds, directly involving Turkey becomes a more and more plausible next step in the escalation of this terrible war.
Alan, you think of visa issuing as a friendly service, and that honors you. In reality in third world countries it is made as difficult as possible. Part of it is a centralized process with exclusively personal, face-to-face interviews. Costs and time are important factors in keeping people even from trying. Other "first World" countries are not much better.
There were PKK graffitis in videos showing Mandibsch after the YPG takeover. Turkish Kurds take great interest in what their brothers do across the border. Erdogan is known to be paranoid about Kurdish autonomy/self determination. I wouldn't be surprised if antagonism to the Kurds, shared between the Assad-regime and Erdogan was a significant contributing factor to the move towards Russia. Also Russia can be expected to care less about Erdogan's affinity to the Muslim Brotherhood-wing of islamism. Together with the economic interest shared with Russia that makes his move very convincing.
So an international conflict with Kurds, directly involving Turkey becomes a more and more plausible next step in the escalation of this terrible war.