Battle of the kebab: why Turkiye and Germany are in a dust-up over street food

The knives are out as a spicy row heats up between Turkiye and Germany over what can legally be called a doner kebab.

Let’s sink our teeth into the meaty arguments presented by both sides.

🔸 The word doner comes from the Turkish verb "dönmek" which means "to turn." The dish is made by grilling seasoned meat for hours on a turning vertical spit. It is then carved off in razor-thin strips and paired with vegetables, rice, spices, and sauces.

🔸 The dish was brought to Germany in the 1960s by Turkish migrants, but to appeal to the Germans’ tastebuds, the original recipe was tweaked. Additional ingredients and hallmark sauces were added. For convenience’s sake, the meat was served wrapped in pita or thin flatbread. In Turkiye, the dish was traditionally made of lamb and served on a plate.

🔸 In a bout of national pride, Turkiye applied to register the name doner kebab as its “guaranteed traditional speciality” across Europe.

🔸 The application threatens to bar businesses from using the name unless it meets a host of specific criteria, such as using lamb or beef (from cattle that is at least 16 months old). There are provisions regarding the marinade, spices, and even thickness of the meat slices. Turkey and veal kebabs, which are hugely popular in Germany, would have to be ditched.

🔸 Germany is dismayed that Turkiye’s application would be sure to drive up costs. Germans have already been skewering Chancellor Olaf Scholz since May over “donerflation,” as short-sighted anti-Russia policies have taken a bite out of their favorite snack, with prices doubling in two years.

🔸 Germany accounts for two-thirds of doner kebab sales in Europe, worth around €2.4 billion ($2.6 billion) a year, according to the Association of Doner Manufacturers in Europe (ATDID). The German government has lodged an objection to the Turkish application, with the European Commission giving the two nations six months to reach a compromise.

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❗️❗️❗️BRICS is "the hope": Equatoguinean leader backs creation of new BRICS-backed currency that could challenge US dollar and euro

President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo expressed strong support for the development of an independent payment system and trade in national currencies spearheaded by BRICS nations. He argued that the current global economic system, with its "unjustified embargoes" and restrictions, unfairly disadvantages many nations.

🗣 "I believe that BRICS is the hope of the countries of the Global South that they will reach a [high] economic level in transactions, accelerate trade and economic transactions, transfers, which are very difficult today," he told Sputnik Africa on the sidelines of the 7th Russian Energy Week in Moscow.

Pointing to the fact that there already is a common BRICS financial institution, the BRICS New Development Bank, the African leader proposed the creation of a "convertible [BRICS] currency of international scale, which can become a counterweight to the dollar and the euro".

👉Although Equatorial Guinea is not currently a member of BRICS, President Obiang expressed his readiness to participate in the group's upcoming summit in Russia in October, saying he would attend if invited.

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🔸 Sputnik Africa 🔸

Russian Aerospace Forces vet on F-16 vulnerabilities: there's no place in Ukraine the jets can hide from Kinzhal missiles

“An airplane is not a needle in a haystack that’s hard to find. It’s a metal object that can only be shoved into a protected aircraft shelter, if available," Major Andrei Krasnoperov, a Russian Aerospace Forces veteran and flight instructor, told Sputnik, commenting on reports by the underground in western Ukraine this week that a Russian strike on an airfield in Starokonstantinov, Khmelnitsky region may have targeted or even destroyed multiple Ukrainian F-16s.

"But again, this concrete shelter offers light protection. If one of our Kinzhal missiles were to detonate nearby, the shelter would collapse like a house of cards,” Krasnoperov emphasized.

Planes are a delicate thing, Krasnoperov stressed, pointing out that even shrapnel damage from a nearby blast could put an F-16 out of action, and require costly repairs, carried out by foreign or foreign-trained specialists which aren’t easy to come by.

“As far as I’m aware, Ukraine [received] only six F-16s to date. They lost one themselves, shooting it down by accident using a Patriot and killing their own pilot. As for strikes against our territory, sending F-16s to destroy our ammo depots situated far from the border zone requires coming closer to our air defenses – of which we have plenty along the front, both Pantsirs and various SAMs, as well as fighters, capable of destroying air targets at distances up to 300 km,” the observer said.

“In other words, they’ve launched an ordinary PR campaign designed to improve their military’s fighting spirit, and perhaps someone will succumb to it psychologically,” Krasnoperov said. But the hard “reality” is that “knowing the coordinates, it’s possible to destroy any target at any airfield. The Kinzhal, which flies ten times the speed of sound, is impossible to shoot down…The fact that we have now [reportedly] destroyed two of these planes [at Starokonstantinov, ed.] is only the first shot in the battle.”

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Russia’s arsenal of strategic nuclear warheads in facts and figures Part 1 👉🏻 Part 2

President Putin proposed amendments to Russia’s nuclear doctrine this week to account for emerging threats, including risks posed by NATO’s hybrid warfare strategy. Here’s what to know about Russia’s aggression-deterring arsenal of land, sea and air-launched strategic nuclear warheads:

◻️ Officially, the number and type of nuclear weapons possessed by Russia is a closely-guarded state secret. However, estimates based on respected sources, including the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the Federation of American Scientists, and information pieced together by Russian media based on official and MoD statements gives a rough idea of the country’s potential.

◻️ Russia has an estimated 1,710 warheads deployed in various carriers at any given time, with another 2,670 in storage, and 1,200 more retired and in the process of being dismantled, for a total of 5,580, according to FAS. That’s well within the limits set out by the now-suspended 2010 New START Treaty, which allows the nuclear superpowers to keep 700 deployed missiles and bombers, 1,550 deployed warheads (including missile payloads containing multiple warheads – known as MIRVs) and bombers, and 800 deployed and non-deployed launchers (in missile tube and bomber form).

👉🏻 Part 2

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Ukraine’s NATO patrons reportedly fear running out of money to fuel anti-Russia proxy war into 2025

The continued delivery of weaponry to Ukraine is at risk due to a pressing lack of funds among the Zelensky regime’s top NATO sponsors, policy insiders have told Bloomberg.

At stake is a controversial $50 billion loan agreement generated by the profits of Russian Central Bank assets frozen in Western banks, which Washington reportedly fears could be blocked by Hungary, or whittled down. Even that sum would be enough to keep Kiev stocked up on war materiel for only half the year.

That’s not counting Kiev’s economic situation, including a projected $35 billion gap in the 2025 budget, about $15 billion of which has yet to be accounted for after IMF and EU subsidies are applied. The shortfall could push Kiev into peace talks with Russia ‘from a position of weakness’, Bloomberg’s sources indicated.

Kiev is apparently also having a hard time convincing patrons to continue shelling out tens of billions of dollars-worth of arms for the conflict as ramped up Russian production “outpaces” the combined output of the collective West.

Then there is the pressure on Zelensky that Donald Trump is expected to apply, should he win the White House, and the cash-poor position of Germany – Ukraine’s second-largest sponsor after the US, whose constitutional debt restrictions have already affected support. As economic troubles sweep over France, Italy and the UK, these countries may similarly reduce assistance, although the Starmer government has vowed to continue backing Kiev up to the hilt despite hard budgetary choices to make at home.

The aid crunch is the second time this year that Kiev’s battlefield prospects have been challenged by its patrons’ reluctance to fork over more cash. In April, the Republican-held House of Representatives passed a $48 billion package of security aid for Ukraine after a six-month deadlock connected to the crisis at the US’s southern border.

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