Actually Kramnik is the one who refuses to shake hands i.e. behave in a sportsmanlike manner.
I think neither Topalov nor Kramnik were cheating, but that it's difficult to understand Topalov's accusations without knowing about the earlier accusations against Topalov.
Yes.
Had Topalov fired his manager over the cheating episode, he might have kept the esteem of chess players. There's some evidence that he's a nice guy and no doubt that his chess is often quite fantastic.
Actually Kramnik is the one who refuses to shake hands i.e. behave in a sportsmanlike manner.
Show me the photo of Topalov with his hand extended and refused. It doesn't exist.
You can say whatever you want and believe whatever you want. Some folks work from evidence.
"the event deciding what player would get the right to challenge Kramnik (the reigning world champion)"
Or rather, Topalov won the FIDE World Championship, while Kramnik didn't have any official title recognised by an organisation with some sort of World Championship cycle behind it. After Topalov had won Kramnik suggested that the two would play a match. Topalov refused to play a match not recognised by FIDE.
After the best players refused to participate in the previous "breakout" cycle Kramnik's position wasn't at all as strong as Kasparov's had been after breaking with FIDE, and Topalov wasn't interested in breaking with FIDE to play a match with Kramnik.
Later the Russian Chess Federation pressed Kirsan about giving Kramnik a title match, stating that they would no longer support him as FIDE president otherwise. Kirsan obliged and constructed the so called reunification match, where the regulations were that the winner had to defend in the already scheduled World Championship of 2007.
After Kramnik won the match, he negotiated with FIDE and would only recognise the 2007 winner as World Champion (if he didn't win it himself) if he was given a title match against him. FIDE obliged, which angered Anand quite a bit:
https://en.chessbase.com/post/anand-blasts-fide-s-political-patronage-of-kramnik
"everyone including players, commentators, and other grandmasters were saying how computer-like his moves were. It's not just baseless allegations...but FIDE as an organization is so corrupt that all charges were dropped"
I think it was a totally baseless accusation and everyone was certainly not saying how computer like his moves were, against Leko he for example had a lost position which Leko blundered away and lost. Then after Topalov won many started to call him a cheater, among them Kramnik's second Bareev and Morozevich's coach etc.
"It was a very low move for Topalov's team to accuse Kramnik of cheating based on absolute zero evidence"
Absolutely.
Actually Kramnik is the one who refuses to shake hands i.e. behave in a sportsmanlike manner.
After reading the book Topalov Kramnik 2006 World Chess Championship: On the Edge in Elista it is interesting that the suggestion of not shaking hands actually came from Topalov's team. Silvio Danailov (Topalov's Manager) wrote to the appeals committee saying "If the match were to continue the World Champion would refrain from shaking hands with Mr Kramnik before the games and would not take part in joint press conferences with him." Also on the topic of cheating it seems in the book that Topalov and his team were convinced Kramnik cheated with annotations such as "A computer like defense!" or "Kramnik went to the bathroom for 5 minutes during a rapid tiebreak match. Bathroom breaks during critical positions in rapid tiebreaks are unheard of". Though at the end of the day, Kramnik blundered mate in 3 in game 2 - which Topalov didn't even see - and made several other mistakes throughout the match and the whole cheating scandal was just a ruckus caused by Danailov and the press.
oh man u said u are late to that party, i wish u are ready for this one!
Here is one of the articles where Bareev talks about how it was "obvious" that Topalov had been cheating for years, and that Kramnik's best move in the match in 2006 was to try to stop Topalov from continuing his cheating:
http://www.kommersant.com/p741182/r_530/FIDE_investigate_claims_Topalov/
I think neither Topalov nor Kramnik were cheating, but that it's difficult to understand Topalov's accusations without knowing about the earlier accusations against Topalov.