[CN] Bulgaria and Turkey, the obvious solution

Day 1,562, 08:51 Published in China China by mihail.cazacu

The surplus Iranian regions are the only real issue in the current Bulgarian - Turkish dispute.

More to the point: after annexing Iran (who, as expected, received ZERO support from Serbia, Hungary, Poland and Spain), Turkey ended up with several regions which are useless to her.

While useless to Turkey, those regions are useful to Bulgaria. So let's take a look at Bulgaria's situation right now.

Bulgaria used to rent the regions she needed from Ukraine. For a while that was OK with Ukraine. On long term, however, leasing those regions away meant less bonuses for the development of the Ukrainian players. It also meant the Ukrainians could not run for congress in those regions (with realistic expectations to actually win), thus further restricting their opportunities to enjoy the game.

At this point we need to acknowledge the obvious:

1) It is in EDEN's best interest that both Bulgaria and Ukraine maximize their player's abilities to grow;

2) It is in EDEN's best interest that Bulgaria returns to the levels of bonuses it had before returning the Ukrainian regions to the rightful owner;

3) Turkey's development is the same with or without those regions. If anybody had any doubts they can check the situation of today, after Iran is back on the map: Turkey's bonuses remained the same!

There is a lot of finger-pointing between Turkey and Bulgaria:

According to some Turks the Bulgarians are chauvinists who get real orgasms from a virtual game.

Well, there are two issues here:

A.) Serbia and Hungary are the only countries who need to compensate their Real World historic failures with in-game victories. Unlike Hungary and Serbia, who started aggression wars against their neighbors only to lose them, in Real Life Bulgaria won the last wars she fought against Turkey. Also unlike the case of Serbia and Hungary, who were the "bad guys" in their wars, in the case of Bulgaria the Ottomans were "the bad guys" by all civilized standards.

So there's nothing to be proven in-game which wasn't proved already by the grand-grandfathers of the current players on the real battlefields ("pet na nozh" - "five on the knife/bayonet"). And those grand-grandfathers were morally right to kick butt.

B.) The results of the last Congress elections in eBulgaria show that the players who don't want to have anything to do with Turkey got in total less votes than those who would favor a mutually beneficial agreement with Turkey, should the in-game circumstances change.

So while the Real Life component of the Bulgarian-Turkish rivalry is real, it is nowhere dominant.

We have an alliance of those who object to Turkey for Real Life reasons and those who object to Turkey for in-game reasons only because Turkey makes the in-game mistake to hold onto those useless regions until "Bulgaria shows some respect".

If Turkey would hand over those regions the majority of the Bulgarians would have no reasons to look for a conflict with Turkey. Of course the guys who are driven by Real Life reasons will still try to see their dreams come true. But they will remain a minority, unable to get the Natural Enemy laws voted.

According to some Bulgarians the Turks are a volatile community, best illustrated by the Turkish - Turkish "civil" war which opposed the group known as Inci to the rest of the Turks.

To that they add the provocative actions of another group, the Lazocrats, the long list of Turkish key players including presidents banned for cheating and a handful of "Ottoman trolls". All of them repeated offenders.

Again, there are a lot of issues with painting the whole Turkish community with such a broad brush:

A.) The Inci, the Lazokrats and the cheaters are the most visible and "loudest" of the Turks who play this game.

However if we are actually counting them like we would be counting the votes in the last Bulgarian elections we see the trouble-makers of all sorts represent about 10% of the active Turkish players.

We have 90% of the Turkish players who play the game just like everybody else.

They fought for EDEN via MPPs in all the important battles. And because Turkey and Bulgaria didn't have a MPP, a lot of Turkish players moved to Bulgaria to tank in the key Bulgarian battles of the last two months (and they kept doing so until the crisis became acute). They moved in an organized way, with the overwhelming majority of the Turkish military taking part in those operations. On the Bulgarian side.


B.) The Real Life relations between Bulgaria and Turkey are peaceful. In the same time the Turkish players and the Greek players might end up shooting each other with real bullets over some stupid rocks in the Aegean Sea.

What eBulgaria and eTurkey did with the Natural Enemy laws in-game, the Turkish and Greek fighter pilots, border guards and sailor do sometimes in Real Life. And some of them play eRepublik.

Yet the overwhelming majority of the Turkish players were able to separate the game from the Real Life. So if they could do it in a case where the danger is real, it is strange to suspect them to harbor some secret fantasies about Bulgaria in-game.

So if we take a close look at the numbers, both sides have enough people who can make an agreement last once an agreement is reached.

The first step is therefore less about "showing respect" or "Real Life issues spilling in-game". The first step is about eliminating the in-game reasons for in-game conflict: the surplus Iranian regions.

Oh, by the way, last time when I checked, the president of Iran was a nutcase called Ahmadinejad, who in spite of being busy with his long-range missiles and nuclear programs still had the time to cut the access of most of the Iranians to this game.

So the in-game eIran can be divided between Turkey and Bulgaria without upsetting too many Real Life Iranians. As the Hollywood disclaimer goes:

"No Iranians were harmed during the making of this movie".